Hyaenidae
Searched as Hyaena. The Paleobiology Database treats Hyaenidae as the accepted name.
The striped hyena is a species of hyena native to North and East Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. It is the only extant species in the genus Hyaena. It is listed on the IUCN Red List as near-threatened, as the global population is estimated to be under 10,000 mature individuals which continues to experience deliberate and incidental persecution along with a decrease in its prey base such that it may come close to meeting a continuing decline of 10% over the next three generations.

Tisha Mukherjee · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- hyaenaPBDB
- Sits inside
- ViverroideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 15 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 23.04 Mya to 0 Mya.
746 occurrences of Hyaenidae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
746 occurrences- Miocene34%
- Pliocene20%
- Pleistocene44%
- Holocene1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
94 formations
- Vogel River Series Formation30
- Swartkrans Formation · Transvaal Group24
- Varswater Formation22
- Nachukui Formation · Omo Group14
- Koobi Fora Formation13
- Sterkfontein Formation · Transvaal Group11
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The named rock units Hyaenidae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 70 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 443 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Hyaenidae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Hyaenidae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
2,024 taxa- Gazella75 sites
- Equus69 sites
- Bovidae59 sites
- Crocuta crocuta59 sites
- Hipparion59 sites
- Hystrix48 sites
- Ceratotherium simum38 sites
- Alcelaphini37 sites
- Cercopithecidae37 sites
- Panthera pardus37 sites
- Canis34 sites
- Mammalia34 sites
- Rhinocerotidae34 sites
- Crocuta33 sites
- Ceratotherium31 sites
- Lepus31 sites
- Theropithecus oswaldi31 sites
- Felis30 sites
- Tragelaphus30 sites
- Homotherium29 sites
- Giraffa jumae28 sites
- Hylochoerus euilus28 sites
- Felidae27 sites
- Hominidae27 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 512 sites for Hyaenidae, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
331 references- Catalogue of Tertiary Fossil Sites of the Land Mammals in the U.S.S.R.33
- Laetoli: a Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania30
- The fossil and living Hyaenidae of Africa: present status25
- McKenna and Bell, 199713
- Mittelpleistozane Saugetierfaunen aus Mitteleuropa - der Versuch einer biostratigraphischen Zuordnung12
- Late Miocene mammal localities of the lower Axios valley (Macedonia, Greece) and their stratigraphic significance12
- Stratigraphy and Paleontology of pliocene and Pleistocene Localities West of Lake Turkana, Kenya11
- Reidentifications and synonomies of European mammals10
- A preliminary report on Carnivora from the Ramapithecus locality, Lufeng, Yunnan10
- Fossile Schildfröten aus China10
- A hominid tooth from Bulgaria: The last pre-human hominid of continental Europe9
- Lothagam: the dawn of humanity in eastern Africa9
Each of the 746 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 319 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Hyaenidae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Tisha Mukherjee
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Laser scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Hyaena hyaena · nmv:mammalogy:C54580
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itViverroidea through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Gray 1821