Hyenas diversify
Dozens of hyena species spread across the Old World, most of them running hunters rather than scavengers.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 9.7 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Hyaenids radiate through the Miocene into over sixty known species, most of them lightly built dog-like pursuit predators rather than the bone-crushing scavengers the family is now associated with. The bone-cracking specialists appear later, taking advantage of a resource almost nothing else can use: the marrow inside large bones, reachable only with teeth and jaw muscles built for enormous compressive force. Only four hyena species survive today.