History of the Fearsome Aardwolf: Why Did This Hyena Species Choose Insects Over Raw Meat?

A pair of fossil skulls of a hyena, between 12 and 15 million years old, that once lived in the Gansu Province of China may shed a light on the mystery involving the mammal's way of eating.

As indicated in a Phys.org report, of the hundred or so identified species of this animal, both alive and extinct, that stalked the earth, all have been eaters of meat or omnivores but one, the aardwolf, which is mysteriously eating termites.

According to assistant professor of integrative biology Jack Tseng from the University of California Berkeley, the aardwolf that lives currently in East and South Africa, Protelese cristata, "is an anomaly."

The professor, who's also a curator in the University of California Museum of Paleontology also said, the hyena species is really quite a mysterious animal.

The Strangest of All Hyenas

In the study published in the Vertebrata PalAsiatica journal, Tseng explained they are hyenas, although they are really the oddest of hyenas as they do not do what other hyenas are doing whether they are still alive or already extinct.

The aardwolves are said to be "termite specialists," which could not be any further away" from the other hyenas when it comes to their ability to cut through meat or crunch bones.

Therefore, the aardwolf has frequently been a really curious mammal that ecologists and paleontologists alike have attempted to learn more about.

A specialist in bone-cracking carnivores, Professor Tseng has studied numerous fossilized hyena bones throughout his career, although none has had the unique trait of the aardwolf.

The Aardwolf Hyena Species

Hyenas first existed roughly 22 million years ago, and the aardwolf seemingly emerged approximately 15 million years back, based on an assessment of their genetic divergence from three other living or existing hyena species. Nonetheless, the only identifiable aardwolf fossils are at most, from four million years ago.

Consequently, the Tseng's interest in the new fossils from China, which fill it what to date, was a so-called "long ghost lineage," living species that have little fossil evidence to associate with its ancestors.

The two skulls, one of which is almost complete, which includes the front part of the lower jaw, were smuggled into the United States, although unfortunately acquired in the early 2000s by Henry Gallano, a paleontologist and collector.

After verifying arrangements to repatriate the skulls to China, Tseng agreed in 2013, to join a small group of other paleontologists, which include experts from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology or IVPP in Beijing to assess them.

Moving Away from the 'Meat-Eating Carving' Diet

At the time, Tseng, a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, worked on the fossil skulls intermittently over the past eight years.

What struck the professor immediately were traits apparently halfway between those of the aardwolf and bone-cracking hyenas.

Specifically, the skulls had a bone palate akin to the aardwolf, perhaps, to accommodate a larger, more muscular tongue with which to slurp up termites.

Essentially, the teeth had wider spacings, also similar to the aardwolf, suggesting that the Gansu hyena was moving away from a "meat-carving diet," a Berkeley News report specified.

Additionally, the species' middle ears had spacious chambers like the shape of a dome, or bullae that are found in animals like some desert rodents and aardwolves that evolved to increase sensitivity to hearing, probably to detect a termite colony's hum.

Related information about the Aardwolf hyena species is shown on National Geographic's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Fossils in Science Times.