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Description
UPDATE #2:
I made the blood a more vibrant and brighter shade of red in PS.

UPDATE: I'll add this to the Primorsky Krai episode of Prehistoric Russia

Quick-ish pencil and ink doodle made for InkGink and his 's monthly contest.
The requirements were:
Winter is here, so draw something that lives in extremely cold conditions!

It can be an alien, dinosaur, future creature, or anything of that sort! Be sure to submit it to the MonthlyContest:Nov2016 folder! I clarified with him (btw I used to think you were a she before I read you profile, ) and he said that any type of cold would do.

Dramatization:

We're in Primorsky Krai, a province in what will one day be the Russian Far East, on the border with North Korea. Here, a killer from the ancient past still lurks.
In the boreal forest, near a cavernous rock formation, the carcass of an old male cave lion lays to rest.

His remains will not be lost to us, for he has his enemies to thank. Meet Crocuta ultima ussurica, the Amur cave hyena. Far from the karstic bear-eaters of Central Europe, these hyenas are closer relatives to the Longdan cave hyenas that once inhabited East Asia, hundreds of thousands of years ago, and fed on our relatives.

Like them, and their modern kin, they form communal dens, where young are raised, and food taken in, including the lion. One day, scientists will find this cave, and name it Geographical Society Cave, where the bones of lions and ungulates alike will lay to rest.

Anyway......

You would think I'd do a cave lion, but no..well.. I mean, yes, but he isn't the star of the show, it's his devourers, Crocuta ultima ussurica, called Amur cave hyenas by me who are the real ones in question.

Their fossils come from Geographical Society Cave, in Primorsky Krai, Russian Far East, and were first described by Russian paleontologist Gennady Baryshnikov in 2014.
The cave was a den used by these hyenas to raise cubs and consume food in safety.
Though they lived in Siberia, they were closer relatives of the hyenas from East Asia, such as from the famous Zhoukoudian, China, called Crocuta ultima ultima. While those hyenas lived during the middle Pleistocene, these lived in the Late Pleistocene, during a warm period, roughly 46-36kya, in the area occupied by Siberian tigers today.

Morphological analysis shows that, while they are no bigger than a modern spotted hyena from Africa, their premolar teeth are as large as those of a Western cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea), highlighting that they were heavily adapted to bone-crushing. Furthermore, from the fragmentary postcranial remains available, they are more robust than the modern species. This in mind, it is likely, says Baryshnikov et al, that these were more oriented towards scavenging, in contrast to the highly predatory hyenas from Europe and Africa.

The warmer climate is believed to be what facilitated their expansion into the area, as hyena distribution in the Pleistocene stopped where the permafrost began, as the presence of permafrost prevented them from making dens. So I guess this is kinda borderline cold inhabitant.
But hey, were found further north, and they were adapted to the cold (we have their fur), so the dead one could count.

While horse and bison remains are present, the remains fo Eurasian cave lions, Panthera spelaea are also present, similar as the case in Europe. They were likely scavenged, unlike in Europe where a good amount were killed in situ.

Paper:
www.zin.ru/journals/trudyzin/d…

Somewhat inspired by George Rinaldino Teichmann's , particularly the lion's disembowelment.
In order to find ref photos for the background, I literally had to copy and paste "пещеры Географического общества" from Baryshnikov et al's Russian version of the paper to google images of the actual place.
Yes, these hyenas lived in Russia. And no, I can't read Cyrillic.

Description
UPDATE #2:
I made the blood a more vibrant and brighter shade of red in PS.

UPDATE: I'll add this to the Primorsky Krai episode of Prehistoric Russia

Quick-ish pencil and ink doodle made for InkGink and his 's monthly contest.
The requirements were:
Winter is here, so draw something that lives in extremely cold conditions!

It can be an alien, dinosaur, future creature, or anything of that sort! Be sure to submit it to the MonthlyContest:Nov2016 folder! I clarified with him (btw I used to think you were a she before I read you profile, ) and he said that any type of cold would do.

Dramatization:

We're in Primorsky Krai, a province in what will one day be the Russian Far East, on the border with North Korea. Here, a killer from the ancient past still lurks.
In the boreal forest, near a cavernous rock formation, the carcass of an old male cave lion lays to rest.

His remains will not be lost to us, for he has his enemies to thank. Meet Crocuta ultima ussurica, the Amur cave hyena. Far from the karstic bear-eaters of Central Europe, these hyenas are closer relatives to the Longdan cave hyenas that once inhabited East Asia, hundreds of thousands of years ago, and fed on our relatives.

Like them, and their modern kin, they form communal dens, where young are raised, and food taken in, including the lion. One day, scientists will find this cave, and name it Geographical Society Cave, where the bones of lions and ungulates alike will lay to rest.

Anyway......

You would think I'd do a cave lion, but no..well.. I mean, yes, but he isn't the star of the show, it's his devourers, Crocuta ultima ussurica, called Amur cave hyenas by me who are the real ones in question.

Their fossils come from Geographical Society Cave, in Primorsky Krai, Russian Far East, and were first described by Russian paleontologist Gennady Baryshnikov in 2014.
The cave was a den used by these hyenas to raise cubs and consume food in safety.
Though they lived in Siberia, they were closer relatives of the hyenas from East Asia, such as from the famous Zhoukoudian, China, called Crocuta ultima ultima. While those hyenas lived during the middle Pleistocene, these lived in the Late Pleistocene, during a warm period, roughly 46-36kya, in the area occupied by Siberian tigers today.

Morphological analysis shows that, while they are no bigger than a modern spotted hyena from Africa, their premolar teeth are as large as those of a Western cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea), highlighting that they were heavily adapted to bone-crushing. Furthermore, from the fragmentary postcranial remains available, they are more robust than the modern species. This in mind, it is likely, says Baryshnikov et al, that these were more oriented towards scavenging, in contrast to the highly predatory hyenas from Europe and Africa.

The warmer climate is believed to be what facilitated their expansion into the area, as hyena distribution in the Pleistocene stopped where the permafrost began, as the presence of permafrost prevented them from making dens. So I guess this is kinda borderline cold inhabitant.
But hey, were found further north, and they were adapted to the cold (we have their fur), so the dead one could count.

While horse and bison remains are present, the remains fo Eurasian cave lions, Panthera spelaea are also present, similar as the case in Europe. They were likely scavenged, unlike in Europe where a good amount were killed in situ.

Paper:
www.zin.ru/journals/trudyzin/d…

Somewhat inspired by George Rinaldino Teichmann's , particularly the lion's disembowelment.
In order to find ref photos for the background, I literally had to copy and paste "пещеры Географического общества" from Baryshnikov et al's Russian version of the paper to google images of the actual place.
Yes, these hyenas lived in Russia. And no, I can't read Cyrillic.