Hualong linsang

The Hualong linsang (Prionodon hualongensis) is an extinct species of linsang, a small carnivoran of the genus Prionodon, described in 2025 from fossils found at the Hualongdong site in Anhui, China. Jiangzuo and colleagues named it in a study of the carnivoran remains excavated from Hualong Cave between 2014 and 2024, a Late Middle Pleistocene locality best known for ancient human fossils. It is the first fossil species known from the genus Prionodon, whose two living members, the banded linsang and the spotted linsang, are native to Southeast Asia. The authors characterise it by a large body size, robust teeth and jaw, and a wide protocone and talonid on the first lower molar, features they read as a diet that included more hard tissue. It belongs to the family Prionodontidae, the Asiatic linsangs, which molecular studies place as the sister group of the cats. Hualong Cave also yielded the extinct Kurten's leopard cat and the archaic giant hyena Pachycrocuta, and the paper counts the Hualong linsang among the extinct species of that carnivoran assemblage.