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A skull found in Egypt shows this top predator stalked ancient Africa

The complete hyaenodont fossil holds evolutionary clues about the ancient apex predators

An illustration of a hyaenodont head shows a short snout and dense teeth

Hyaenodonts, illustrated here, were hyena-sized, meat-eating mammals that hunted through the forests of present-day Africa roughly 30 million years ago.

Ahmad Morsi

By Richard Kemeny

In the fossil-rich sands of the Faiyum Oasis in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered one of the most complete skulls ever found from a formidable family of predators that roamed the Earth roughly 30 million years ago.

The fossil, complete with an upper set of teeth, revealed the animal to be a newly discovered species of extinct hyena-sized mammals known as hyaenodonts, researchers report February 17 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.