CAVE HYENA - CROCUTA SPELAEA or HYAENA SPELAEA

Ref #:  F5

Description:  Cave Hyena (Crocuta spelaea or Hyaena spelaea) Skull

Period:  Pleistocene 500,000 - 20,000 years ago

Provenance:  Cave Deposit - Eastern Europe

Measurements:  28 cm long x 18 cm wide (estimated if with zygomatic arches)

Comments:  As with all cave skull discoveries, the lower jaws are rarely, if ever found articulated with the skull and would have been dispersed long ago.  The lack of a lower jaw with this specimen is typical and expected.  Specimen is 100% original and "as found" with no restoration or repair.  This is a nearly complete, intact skull of the Giant European Cave Hyena collected from a cave deposit in Romania.  It appears to be of a sub-adult due to the bone sutures being not fully ossified.  Dentition shows only minor wear for these animals and is complete except for one tooth making this an important specimen for dentition reference.  Left zygomatic arch is mostly complete, right arch is missing.  The sagittal crest is not as large as specimen F2 and not fully fused in the frontal region as seen above in comparison to F2.  The region above the left canine fang indicates pathology possibly from some type of bone abscess or injury. 

The Giant European Cave Hyena (Crocuta spelaea, aka Hyaena spelaea) first appeared in Europe around 500,000 years ago and lived up to the near close of the last European Ice Age.  They coexisted with primitive humans such as Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon man and prehistoric European cave paintings have been found depicting these beasts with spots.  Certainly, these beasts were feared and avoided at all costs due to the danger of an unfortunate meeting. The spots offer an insight to what they may have looked like and scientists agree that the closest living relative to the Giant European Cave Hyena is the African Spotted Hyena.  Fossil remains discovered in Great Britain and Alpine regions indicate these locations were home to the largest of the Giant Cave Hyenas.

The Giant European Cave Hyena stood was very large measuring close to one meter high at its shoulders. It weighed anywhere from 80 to up to 130 kilograms.  The design of the skull and teeth indicate these creatures had incredibly powerful jaw muscles that could crush the skull or neck of prey with a single deadly bite.  These animals were nocturnal apex predators that lived in caves and reared their young there, as well.  They hunted in packs of 10 to 25 animals. They also scavenged on carrion at all opportunities.  Cave floor deposits where these beasts inhabited indicate a varied diet of deer, boar, horse, bison, woolly mammoth and woolly rhino.  Several sites have also yielded gnawed on and partially digested human remains from Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon humans!  Like the African Spotted hyenas of today, it is likely that the Giant European Cave Hyena had the most complex social structure of ALL non-primate species known!