For almost a million years, a short-faced bear (Arctodus simus) has wandered through the forests of the North American continent. He reached 3 meters in height, standing on four legs, and at the same time could move faster than a horse. The bear was twice the size and much stronger than a grizzly bear, which could kill with one blow of its paw. To this day, scientists are trying to understand how this powerful predator lived, what it ate and, most importantly, how it underwent complete destruction 10 thousand years ago.
Was it due to climate change or the emergence of primitive people on the continent.
The Ice Age ended in North America 14 thousand years ago. Melting ice has exposed soil and vegetation - an endless source of food for a diverse range of animals. The continent looked like an African national park - it was teeming with mammals. Herds of bison, horses, camels and even huge mammoths moved along it. The law was the same for everyone - kill, or you will be killed. And in this merciless world, only one animal surpassed the others - the short-faced bear. This beast was the largest predator on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs. Experts believe he could have attacked any animal and killed it. The short-faced bear or the bulldog bear, as it is also called, had incredibly powerful jaws, the bite of which was crushing. Powerful claws and strong jaws made the bear a skillful and terrifying predator.
But with deadly power, the bear was unable to cope with an unusual geographical find in southern California - a viscous tar lake that has become one of the worst animal traps. Tar pits were formed from molten bitumen that rose from the bowels of the earth to its surface. Many of these puddles were hidden under foliage and vegetation. Five centimeters of resin was enough to completely immobilize anyone. The harder the bear tried to get out, the more he got stuck in a sticky quagmire. At best, he died in a few days from exhaustion, hunger and thirst, but it is much more likely that he was torn to pieces by primitive wolves, saber-toothed cats or lions, and then death was certainly very painful.
Resin pits keep traces of life as it was 14 thousand years ago. This prehistoric cemetery of extinct Ice Age animals has become one of the largest fossil caches in the world. It is located in the heart of Los Angeles and is called Rancho La Brea. Since 1913, scientists have been excavating the remains of thousands of animals killed here. As a result, one of the largest collections in the world was created, including 3.5 million samples of these remains. Here are collected thousands of skeletons of saber-toothed cats, primitive wolves, and only three boxes with the bones of a giant bear. Such a numerical disparity in the found remains indicates an important characteristic of the short-faced bear - it was elusive and fell into a trap only when there was drowning prey in it.
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Unlike other carnivores, these bears hardly lived in packs. They preferred to hunt alone and required huge open spaces. Due to the rarity of the short-faced bear species, each bone found is the key to solving the riddle of their existence and lifestyle. The extensive collection of animal remains on the ranch creates a vivid picture of a prehistoric landscape inhabited by ferocious predators competing in strength with a bear.
There were many saber-toothed cats, wolves, and American lions that could hunt bison, horses, camels, and even giant sloths. The continent was also inhabited by people who migrated from Siberia to Alaska through the Bering Strait 14 thousand years ago. Experts agree that humans have been in contact with giant bears, which means that primitive hunters and short-faced bears may have been fighting among themselves for prey. Although tarry wells give us some idea of the bears, only facts can fully clarify the nature of this animal.
The short-faced bear lived in a vast swath of North America, from Alaska to Mexico, so it is difficult to say what its exact habitat was and what landscape surrounded it. The bones of animals that lived on the earth during the Ice Age vividly testify that the Pleistocene era was dangerous for all large predators, including the bear. Killing was not so easy - each potential victim struggled to fight for her life, trying to kick and break free. And as a result, as often happens, it can injure a predator. The closest North American relative of the short-faced bear is the grizzly.
Although he is also in many ways ferocious, the characteristics of a grizzly bear are different from his huge prehistoric cousin. 14 thousand years ago, grizzlies lived in the same habitat as short-faced bears, but they were not rivals, just one subspecies slowed down the development of another. A grizzly bear weighed from 227 to 272 kilograms and, standing on four paws, a grizzly bear reached a height of about a meter, when, like a short-faced bear, reached up to 540 kilograms, and two meters on four legs. And when this huge predator got up on the back, then his height was 3 meters and 300 centimeters. This is 2-3 times the size of a grizzly bear. Thus, he clearly stood out against the background of other monsters and in this regard, the question arises, how did he become such a giant?
Scientists suggest that it was the size of the animal that made it a fearless hunter, capable of killing any prey that was beyond the power of other predators, for example, the earthen sloth, a herbivore that weighed 908 kilograms. Despite its slow movement, its large size protected it from smaller predators. Like modern elephants in the African savannas, sloths were so large that they were difficult to kill. If a sloth was attacked by a short-faced bear, he used his own mass as a defense. Rising on its hind legs, it became taller and more impressive than a predator, but on its hind legs, the bear reached the same size. Thus, the collision of these animals was something like a boxing match, when the wrestling athletes hang on top of each other.
The bear's combat arsenal was unmatched. Imagine the possibility of his long paws and sharp claws, with which he could immobilize an opponent, rip open his stomach or break his shoulder with a bite of powerful jaws. These jaws were so strong that biting the animal by the paw or any other part, it almost immediately broke under the strong pressure of the predator's jaw muscles. With a broken shoulder, the sloth cannot resist the predator, and the bear wins this fight.
Now do you understand what was the diet of this bear? He could kill any animal. But did he eat plant-based foods, like his closest relative, the grizzly bear? Information about what the animal ate is contained in the isotopes of carbon and nitrogen present in its bones. Upon analysis, it was found that the bear was an absolute carnivorous predator. He ate buffalo and horses, and Canadian deer, and even mammoths. If you look at the behavior of this bear, then it is unique. No modern animal has such a universal preference for prey. Most of them prefer to hunt a particular species.
A short-faced bear had to consume 16 kilograms of meat per day to survive, that is, 2-2.5 times more than a lion needs. Despite the fact that he had all the signs of a super-large predator, we are clearly beginning to notice the very special character of this colossal beast. It does not fit a little into the framework of the concept of predators, primarily because none of them has reached this size in the past. If you compare it to a grizzly, calculations will show that it moved much faster - 50 kilometers per hour, but a grizzly could accelerate much faster from 0 to 40 kilometers per hour. Lack of mobility was the main disadvantage of the short-faced bear when hunting. If he were a super-predator, as evidenced by isotope analyzes, he could rush at the victim with lightning speed, like a lion. However, the structure of the bear's bones was not adapted for this.
Now it becomes clear to us that the bear could not pursue the prey, since its long legs were not adapted to sharp turns at high speed. If we look at the skeleton of a bear, the first thing that catches our eye is the very long legs. They are too thin and fragile for an animal of this size. Their thickness is disproportionately small in comparison with the length, which entails the danger of the animal falling, as well as an increased load on the limbs. And although we know that the bear somehow managed to catch and eat almost any animal, the long and thin bones of its legs were not strong enough to handle its massive 545 kilogram body at high speed. A short-faced bear could only chase an animal running in a straight line, such as a horse.
But if she made a sharp turn, and the bear turned around after her, he could simply break his legs. If all these elements are combined, you get a slightly different portrait of a bear. This is a very large, long-legged animal that could move for a long time at a moderate speed. Thus, the short-faced bear developed such growth not in order to hunt, but in order to scare away other animals and force them to give up their hard-earned prey. It turned out that instead of the highest form of a predator, we have before us the highest form of a scavenger, traveling long distances in search of easy prey.
Today, grizzly bears follow a pack of wolves to intercept their prey after the victim is killed. And 14 thousand years ago, the short-faced bear followed the same strategy - it waited for a pack of primitive wolves to drive and kill the prey, and then pounced on them to get a trophy. To protect their labor, the wolves surrounded the bear and attacked him from different directions. But although the gray predators could fight for the prey, the huge size of the bear frightened them off, because rising on its hind legs, it towered 2.5 meters above them.
The short-faced bear was more a thief than a hunter. It was created to steal prey from other predators, but its impressive size not only scared away animals, but also had more important uses. His body was much more suited for uniform movement than for throwing and hunting. The ability to locomotor movement is determined by the length of the stride. If during the hunt thin paws were an obvious drawback, then due to their lightness, long-term travels did not require almost any effort. With such a light gait, the bear did not cost anything to walk 2.5 kilometers. By analogy with other animals, scientists were able to calculate the speed of a short-faced bear - 12.8 kilometers per hour. Whereas an ordinary animal would take hours to overcome this distance.
Rough calculations showed that the individual habitat of one bear was from 480 to 800 square kilometers, where it can move in continuous search for food. So how did the short-faced bear manage to find the necessary 16 kilograms of meat every day? Such a large scavenger would require a large arsenal of tricks to find food, including a strong sense of smell. For this purpose, the bear's nasal cavities were enlarged, so its sense of smell had to exceed modern bears. Grizzlies have some of the most sophisticated olfactory mechanisms on earth and can smell from 5 to 7 kilometers away.
But his huge ancestor could find animal corpses within a radius of 9.5 kilometers, besides, his height allowed the short-faced bear to rise more than three meters above the ground and smell the smells brought by the wind from afar. It is very important that he spent few calories in search of food. However, when the bear found the victim's corpse, he still had to steal it. And it was here that he had to fight for the title of the most important predator.
But taking possession of the prey was not as easy as finding it. Usually, a large predator that killed her was nearby. If a short-faced bear found, for example, the corpse of a bison, he was most likely opposed by a flock of saber-toothed cats. The huge growth of the bear was contrasted with the number of competitors. Saber-toothed cats entered the battle, having numerical advantages, as well as long sharp fangs. But let's not forget that in front of them was still a bear with a massive skull, strong jaws and powerful claws with which he could easily throw the cat away. Since animals rarely fight for life, experts believe that the outcome of the battle was a foregone conclusion. As soon as the bear hits one of the saber-toothed cats, it is more possible that the rest will immediately retreat. As for hunting mammoths, most likely prehistoric bears ate them already dead,since live he would hardly have coped with a movable trunk and huge tusks.
These encounters explain why the short-faced bear has evolved to such an impressive size. Sometimes he didn't even have to fight for food. From one sight of it, predators threw their prey. But what happened if the bear was late for dinner? No matter how fast he ran, the main part of the prey was already eaten by predators. It would be difficult for such a huge carnivore to get enough of a corpse, from which skin and bones literally remained. And here the predator was helped by his short muzzle. Due to the fact that the bear's front teeth were located close to its jaw joint, it could easily gnaw bones. The structure of the jaw of the short-faced bear allowed him to gnaw even very large bones and feed on bone marrow, which was high in fat, lipids and additional calories.
Despite the fact that the bear was not an active hunter, he still remained the king of the Pleistocene fauna. However, another dangerous predator appeared on earth - man. People possessed not only the ability to hunt mammoths, but also a sufficiently developed intellect that allowed them to kill any animal. Scientists are still researching the relationship between human beings and the short-faced bear. Found animal looms with traces of stabbing cutting tools are the only evidence of contact between humans and the primitive bear. But having carefully examined them, it was concluded that the blows were inflicted on the already numb corpse of the animal. In this case, the bear was not killed by the hunter, but only found by him. Ironically, here people themselves acted as scavengers for the dead bear.
10 thousand years ago all large predators disappeared in North America, not only short-faced bears, but also primitive wolves, lions, mammoths, giant sloths and saber-toothed cats. They were all wiped off the face of the earth forever. This is an unprecedented and inexplicable event. The main characters of our article were the last to die out. Currently, there are several popular hypotheses for such a mass extinction, one of which is attributed to the destruction of these animals due to human hunting activities. There is also another version that when people came to a certain area, they first killed all the predators so that they, in turn, would not kill them. However, there is no evidence that humans killed prehistoric animals for this very purpose. Because we knowthat people and other predators coexisted for a long time in other regions of the planet and that the latter were not exterminated. From this it follows that another factor is to blame for the extinction of animals - weather conditions.
17 thousand years ago in North America, rapid climate change began to occur. According to one theory, this was the result of a collision with a comet, after which there was a sudden cold snap. This partial return to ice age conditions caused enormous damage to the ecosystem. Many plants were damaged, and after a while they became so few that herbivores were deprived of food and died, so the predators that feed on them also disappeared. However, opponents of this theory again point to the lack of physical evidence. Where are the samples of the remains of frozen or starved animals, testifying to the cataclysm?
How did large representatives of the fauna manage to survive during countless other cold snaps for 2 million years, and not survive the one that ended the Ice Age? Many scientists, nevertheless, are inclined to the hypothesis of climate change when large predators disappeared. Thus, the corpses of herbivores, which the short-faced bear ate, also disappeared. Since the bear ate exclusively meat and was unable to adapt to other food sources, this predator also became extinct. It is curious that their relative grizzly, finding himself in such conditions, overcame them and survived.
It is believed that the short-faced bear lived on the planet for about a million years, and yet this species disappeared from the face of the earth, simply because it could not adapt to drastic changes in the environment. But during his reign, he still remained the main predator with sharp claws and powerful jaws, thanks to which he could tear to pieces any animal. The bear dominated nature, and nature gave him every chance to continue to do so. However, later she began to change her conditions, and the short-faced bear could not adapt to them, forever leaving the post of the king of predators.