High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Pachycrocuta was a genus of prehistoric hyenas. The largest and most well-researched species was the giant hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris, which stood about 100 cm (39 in) at the shoulder and may have weighed 190 kg (420 lb) — the size of a lioness. This would make it the largest hyena to have ever lived. It lived between the Middle Pliocene and the Middle Pleistocene, about 3 million to 500,000 years ago. Fossil remains have been found in many localities of Eurasia and southern and eastern Africa. Most material consists of fragmented remains, usually of the skull, but there has been a cache of very comprehensive bone material unearthed at the famous Zhoukoudian locality which probably represents the remains of animals which used these caves as lairs for many millennia, while at the western end of their former range, a huge assemblage of Pleistocene fossils at Venta Micena in southeastern Spain also represents a den.