CAVE HYENA - CROCUTA SPELAEA or HYAENA SPELAEA

Ref #:  F2

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

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

Provenance:  Cave Deposit - Austria

Measurements:  30.5 cm long x 19.75 cm wide

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 as found with no restoration.  This is a complete intact skull of the Giant European Cave Hyena collected from a cave deposit in the early 1920's in Austria.  The wear on the large canines is natural from feeding wear.  Both zygomatic arches on this skull are original and intact.  All teeth are original and as found.  One carnassial is partially missing and all incisors are missing.  The pronounced sagittal crest and broad zygomatic arches indicate incredibly powerful jaw muscles that could crush the skull or neck of prey with a single deadly bite.

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.  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!