running hyena

plural running hyenas

1. An extinct genus of hyenas, †Chasmaporthetes.

   The American Hyena, also called the Running Hyena, shared more physical characteristics with wolves and dogs than with most other hyena species. This Hyena's closest relative, the Aardwolf, is still alive today.

   2016 February 17, Ted Rechlin, Prehistoric Beasts of the Ice Age, Courier Dover Publications, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   In Africa between 1.8 million and 900,000 ʙᴘ the Paracolobus - Africa's largest monkey, three species of sabretooth (which survived in Eurasia and America), ten species of elephant-like Proboscidea, one or more 'forest hippo' (Hexaprotodon) species, the large ground-sloth analogue Ancylotherium ('hooked beast'), the lion-sized hyena Pachycrocuta, the cheetah-like 'running hyena' Chasmaporthetes, a species of large dog, giant pigs, the 'super-aquatic' hippo H. gorgops, the hipparion (a genus of horse), and the australopithecines all went extinct.

   2010, Craig Dilworth, Too Smart for Our Own Good, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 76

   In fact, when he's hot on your white rump, the running hyena Chasmaporthetes looks more like a jaguar than it does like the slouchy little hyena that will be around a million years from now. That's just for starters.

   2017 June 6, Michael P. Branch, Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness, Shambhala Publications, →ISBN, page 58