Paleo Profile: King of Carnivora · 2:36pm Aug 28th, 2018
Proofed by Lance Omikron
After the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs, a large void was left in the ecosystem for a variety of roles from small carnivores to grazing megafauna herbivores to the predators who preyed upon them. Depending on the continent in the time in the Cenozoic era, a variety of would-be successors came and went. Terrestrial crocodilians, large flightless, predatory birds, still flying predatory birds, carnivorous hoofed ungulates, and numerous marsupials from families whose modern representatives include possums, kangaroos, and wombats. One family that rose up amongst the competition and seemed poised to take the throne the Theropod dinosaurs left were the Credonts.
Nimble, powerful, and packing extraordinarily dangerous bites from their huge skulls and jaws; the Creodonts swept the board and outcompeted numerous rivals on most of the continents. This family came in a myriad of shapes and sizes, ranging from resembling weasels and otters to hulked-out hyenas. They could shear through flesh and crush bone while being competent ambush predators.
But, in the background, a family of challengers began to arise from humble beginnings. One of the first of their line was the humble Miacis.
Small, not even as large as your average ferret, Miacis and its relatives came into existence shortly after the demise of the dinosaurs, but it wasn’t until roughly 45 to 50,000,000 years ago that they really started to hit their stride. Coming down from the trees, they diversified and started to adapt to new food sources and new prey items. Unlike their more brutish Creodont distant cousins, they had a much larger brain, more complicated dentition that could adapt to more varieties of diet, and a highly adaptable hip and leg design which could both be optimised for speed, stamina, and or weight support with very little modification. By being so generalized, the Miacids were able to readily adapt to new ecosystems and roles with very little change to the underlying structure being needed. But of all the roles they ever came to play, they never quite gave up their taste for flesh. And so, they became known as Carnivora.
Rapidly diversifying along their two main families, Carnivora took up roles ranging from amphibious shellfish eaters to small scavengers to apex predators that could go head-to-head against the Creodonts and, through use of more complicated brains, adept and maneuverable forelimbs, and a fast, more agile leg design; win. The two main families are Caniformia, which today include canines, bears, raccoons, weasels, seals, and relation; and Feliformia, which today include felines, mongooses, hyenas, civets, and relation.
And today, they stand as the most common terrestrial or amphibious apex predators on every single continent except ecosystems with crocodilians and the open ocean with sharks and cetaceans, and even then they vastly outnumber the competition in non-apex roles. All achieved the recombination of intelligence, being one of the few predatory families to develop a social structure, adaptability, generalized body plans, and almost never sacrificing the basic traits that allowed their ancestors to overthrow the competition. Truly, Carnivora is a massive success story for mammals. And though animals obviously do not have leadership across species, I think it is important to “crown” this kingdom of scavengers, omnivores, and predators their monarch. But whom should wear this crown?
One could make the argument for a variety of adept Carnivorans, past and present, who were massively successful in a variety of roles and still are. However for the sake of ease as well is the fact only one can bear the crown at a time, I will instead look at the family I feel is the most successful overall and bestow it upon their greatest member. And when I think of a successful large Carnivoran form, I think of bears.
Bears are some of the most widespread large Carnivorans to ever exist, living on all continents except Australia and Antarctica (yes, there used to be African bears even historically). And for the most part they excel best by not excelling at anything at all, but by doing so, they don’t come up short on anything at all. They are fast, but not the fastest. They hunt well, but they aren’t the best at it. They certainly are powerful, the Kodiak and Polar bear being the strongest living Carnivorans by far, but in many ecosystems that they can be exceeded by big cats or large packs of canines. The eat a lot of plants for the most part (Polar bear aside for obvious reasons), but they aren’t the most adept animals at processing plant material. However they are still very quick, have an enormous range of diet, superb senses with keen vision and an extraordinarily strong sense of smell, and while other animals might be able to individually outrun, outclimb, or outswim a bear; you’d be extremely hard-pressed to find an animal that can do all three. If a lion cannot find antelope to hunt down and kill, it starves. If a grizzly bear cannot find deer to hunt down and kill, it goes off and eats some berries, grass, bugs, and even tree bark.
And in terms of raw power, bears are without a doubt the strongest Carnivorans on land. A brown bear doesn’t need razor sharp claws like a lion to do damage, though that’s not to call their claws blunt; certainly not when they have a specialized forelimb that can swing out with enough force to crush an elk’s skull or knock a moose’s head off its joint. And bears still bear their family’s trademark canine fangs and blade-like incisors and premolars to rend, tear, and crush anything it wants to bite into; plant or animal. Some large polar bears have canine fangs longer than most people’s fingers and pack a bite force that can snap a human femur in a single chomp.
Before lions were widely known outside of Africa and parts of western Asia, almost every culture in Europe, north Asia, and North America called the bear the “King of the Beasts”. This was due to their power, the fact other predators back down when confronted by them, and their ability to rear up on their hind legs and stand tall being seen as a trait that put them above most other animals. And it’s not hard to see why given they are very commonly apex predators who can assert dominance and claim over a territory or kill site above other predators by sheer presence alone.
And it’s not hard to see why humans respected ursines so much, given historically and prehistorically it was actually very difficult to kill or ward off large bears. Thanks to their stout build, dense muscle, and thick bones; killing a bear before the advent of firearms largely relied on traps and infection rather than direct combat, which was only doable with sheer dumb luck. Even into the modern age, hunter-gatherer groups often relied on relocating and warding off problem bears rather than try to send hunters to attack them head on as their thick muscle and fat meant arrows didn’t do enough damage.
This fear of the ursine even carries into modern tongue. In all Germanic languages, the original word for “bear” has actually been lost. The reason? The European Brown Bear was a creature that historically ranged across Europe, could grow to a large size, and was not afraid of humans. And to an animal that can casually rip a car door off, smashing its way through a sod or thin wooden wall to access the interior’s food stocks or inhabitants would be a simple task. The origin of the modern word “Bear” is similar to the modern German word “Bär” which means “brown” or more specifically in this context, “he who is brown”. No word yet if that was the color of people’s pants when a bear decided it wanted inside. This was used as a euphemism because it was thought by invoking the animal’s name, you’d summon one eventually.
That’s right, people were so spooked about bears they took caution not to ever say their name so much the actual word has gone extinct. Based off language families we can reconstruct that it was similar to the Greek word “Arktos” which roughly translates in its older forms as “Destroyer”.
And there was one type of bear that lived until very recently that would make any of its modern relatives seem feeble by comparison. From the line of Miacis that ran through the trees came a creature over 2,000x more massive that could snap them like twig. Able to outrun a moose, wrestle down and break a bison’s back with its paws, bite through bovine limb bones like we would a carrot, and tower over any other predator it might meet. The most powerful terrestrial mammalian predator the world has ever seen and the king of the Last Ice Age flesh eaters. The twin genera of Arctodus and Arctodotherium, the most dangerous flesh eaters on land since Tyrannosaurus rex.
Profile
Species: Arctodus (Arc-toe-dus) simus
Name Meaning: Fanged Bear with a Flattened Nose
Family: Caniforma (Canines and relation), Ursidae, Tremarctinae (New World Bears)
Location: North America, Beringia
Time: Pleistocene to Holocene, 1.8 MYA - 9,000 YA
Height: 1.8 meters at the shoulder (all fours), 3.6 meters (reared up)
Length: 3.6 meters
Weight: 1,000+ kg (boars), 600+kg (sows)
Habitat: Scrubwood, loose jungle, and forests
Notable features: Extremely powerful forelimbs, twenty claws ranging from 5 to 7cm, massive but stout canine teeth, shorter and very robust jaw, very tall build
Now for the sake of brevity for this article I will be chiefly discussing the North American genus, Arctodus, rather than the South America genus, Arctodotherium. Mostly because Arctodus is known from more numerous and complete fossils while also being more predatory than the chiefly herbivorous southern variety. For all intents and purposes the two genera are very similar in terms of body shape, lifestyle, and size with Arctodotherium being just bearly larger.
Arctodus is often called the giant short faced bear, named so for it’s reportedly shorter muzzle lengthwise in comparison to some other bears. This bear was simply massive, very easily over three times the mass of a modern-day grizzly bear and twice that of the average polar bear. When it stood up on its hind legs it could have looked through a two story building’s window with your average man barely coming up to its hips.
The fact that this genus had proportionally slightly (keyword slightly) longer legs than modern bears would’ve only added to the effect.
Even on all fours this bear would have towered over wolves, lions, sabretooths, and other bears. And at a weight of over a ton for a large male, it is quite possible the very ground would have shook at its approach, let alone the force of its massive paws hitting the ground when it lowered to stalk or charge forward. To something like an ancient pack of wolves, it would have felt like walking thunder stomping towards them.
Arctodus has been a bear that, depending on the study, has gone through quite a few revisions. When observing the genus’ long length and sharp teeth, some hypothesized that Arctodus was a dedicated carnivore and predator unlike modern bears except for the polar bear. But unlike the polar bear, which is largely a pure carnivore out of necessity because its environment has very few terrestrial plants, Arctodus was seen as the bear version of a tiger. This was based off stable isotope analysis of an Arctodus skeleton that indicated a heavy concentration of nitrogen-15, an isotope most common in carnivore bones as it is absorbed by consumption of animal protein; herbivores having a different nitrogen isotope. Thus Arctodus was seen as an apex predator who reigned over its domain by hunting any and all herbivores it saw fit to. Bison, horses, camels, ground sloths, even mastodon and mammoth with an occasional rival carnivore.
A later hypothesis poised that Arctodus was indeed a near pure carnivore, but it was not a hunter but a scavenger. By using its massive size as a means of intimidation, it would stalk over and steal carcasses from predators through an act called kleptoparasitism. Supporters of this possibility thought that Arctodus used its massive nasal cavity (thus a great sense of smell) and long legs as a means of being a long-distance walker to better sniff out and find carcasses to steal. And if the intimidation factor did work, it could use its powerful bite to crack open bones to extract the bone marrow from to make the best use it could from what of the carcass it could obtain.
In reality, while the exact answer is still unknown it is considered most likely that Arctodus as a bear behaved like, spoiler warning, a bear. An opportunistic omnivore. A good example of a modern equivalent would be the brown bear. Brown bears are superb omnivores and dine on a enormous plethora of food sources. One type of brown bear, the grizzly bear of the central and western United States and Canada, has been known to consume things ranging from water plants like cattails, tree bark, mushrooms, tubers, soft grasses, carrion by stealing carcasses, deer, elk, bison, moose, domestic animals, moths, grubs, ants, other predators like wolves, mountain lions, wolverines, and black bears, and lots and lots of fish. If one considers genetic similarity, which would mean the polar bear is the same species as the grizzly bear, just a different subspecies, one can also include the diet of it and other types of brown bears for comparison. Thus one can expand the list to include things ranging from marine mammals, seals, caribou, antelope, and seaweeds.
What I am getting at here is that no two Arctodus would’ve had the exact same diet in every single ecosystem of which they lived in, and that as opportunistic omnivores they would’ve made use of anything available to them. In some areas it might’ve been a dedicated predator in one time of year and then eat nothing but grasses and berries another time or place. Some evidence for this is given in this paper which documents all of Arctodus’ anatomical features and compares to modern bears. It finds no large discrepancy between Arctodus and its modern-day relatives, suggesting that it wasn’t all that much different. Measurements of the skull also show that the reported “short face” was actually more of an optical illusion created by the Arctodus having a very broad snout, thus making its muzzle look shorter than it really was. This means the reported “short face” really had no effect on its diet.
In reality Arctodus didn’t have a proportionally shorter snout than the modern spectacled bear, which is its closest cousin, and spectacled bear snouts themselves aren’t that much shorter than the norm.
Sup?
A good piece of evidence for this view of Arctodus as an opportunistic omnivore is the fact that brown bears, even the large Pleistocene “Cave Bear” version, did not reach North America until after Arctodus when extinct, despite having access to it for tens of thousands of years through Beringia. This suggests they had trouble establishing themselves in North America despite the wealth of resources available. Polar bears and black bears certainly had no trouble crossing over, but they occupy different ecological niches than brown bears. The most probable explanation for this was simply that the role they would’ve played in the ecosystem was already occupied and there would’ve been competition.
And with its long limbs allowing it to run faster and cover more ground, a much larger nasal cavity to sniff out food resources, and a larger size to better hunt, intimidate, or protect itself from its fellow Ice Age denizens; it seems Arctodus could “out-brown bear” a brown bear in Pleistocene North America. It was only when Arctodus went extinct that the brown bear could move in to pick up the slack as a replacement in Holocene North America.
So the short answer to what did Arctodus eat is, “Yes”. And no other predator in Ice Age North America could say no when it said so.
They’ve even found Arctodus tooth marks on mammoth and mastodon bones, which vouch for the bear’s power regardless of if it was a case of hunting or scavenging. If hunting, that means this bear managed to take down basically sub-adult and, albeit very, very likely weakened, adult elephants. If it was scavenging that means the bear had so much size and power for an intimidation factor it could force all the other carnivores who’d have come to the buffet of a carcass to back off. Being a scavenger doesn’t mean being weak when you might have to make sabretooths and packs of dire wolves back off.
Pictured: Mastodon bone with Arctodus tooth marks
And for a little showing of that ursine strength. Here’s a moderately sized inland grizzly bear, likely around 200kgs casually batting around a 400kg steel canister.
Young 120kg black bear 1, tree 0
And heaven help you if they lean on your car’s side mirror and lightly tug on it.
Thankfully, some bears put their smarts to use and are a little more polite with their break ins.
And considering Arctodus could strike with enough force to shatter most bones in a man-sized prey’s body and sprint at up to 60 kilometers to per hour, over twice that of your average human; and this was the most likely outcome should an ice-age hunter find this titan.
This is an animal that could run you down, roar loud enough to sound like an oncoming freight train, bite a limb off or snap it with a single bite, and kill by giving the mother of all b****-slaps.
The exact reason why the bear of bears went extinct is still unclear to this day. Like most North American megafauna, it seems to have gone extinct between 9,000 and 10,000 years ago. The most plausible explanation is that a shift in the environment upset the ecosystems and caused most of the prey items and food sources Arctodus relied upon to disappear, with added pressure from human competition helping to nudge it over the edge. Humans almost certainly couldn’t have been the primary cause as subsistence hunting on large continents had been ongoing in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years without significant extinctions. The fact humans had already been in the New World for at least 12,000 years and couldn’t have had a very large population due to mortality rates also helps support the theory the climate was the primary cause of the Pleistocene-Holocene extinction with humans just contributing.
In North America the ecosystem was so badly disrupted that all large predatory mammals except a small few died out on that continent, later immigrants from other continents moving in to replace them. Genetic study on pumas show that all pumas currently in North America are not descended from the North American ice age puma, but the South American species which survived the demise of their northern kin and repopulated the region. Wolves, coyotes, and brown bears all did the same to some extent.
In such a collapsed environment, Arctodus just couldn’t get its caloric needs and gradually died off. In fact the family of New World or Short Faced Bears it belonged to, Tremarctinae, suffered so badly they have only a single sole surviving member in the Spectacled Bear. All other surviving bear species such as American Black Bears and Polar Bears belong to the Old World or Long Snouted Bear family.
But for almost two million years, a flesh eating beast roamed the North American forests and plains whose footfalls shook the ground like walking thunder. One who figuratively and literally stood heads and shoulders above sabretooths, giant lions, and dire wolf packs. If the First Nations of this continent feared and respected the grizzly, they must have had nightmares when confronted with a creature so powerful, fast, and intelligent. If the crown demands a diner of flesh to wear it, Arctodus truly was the King of the Beasts.
I totally agree with you on the Short Faced Bear, this thing was massive. Getting smacked by that would probably be like having a 17 wheeler smash into you.
So, Tyrannosaurus for the Mesozoic, Arctodus for the Cenozoic, and Gorgonops for the Paleozoic?
Are they strong enough to puncher threw steel they have sharp claws as well they all that strength to kill how bad would the damage be.
Has there been an estimate put forth for the bite force of Arctodus?
Not the Mosa vs. Liv fight I was hoping for, but it's a nice change of pace from the silence that's been going on here lately.
Ah, so bears were the equivalent of Voldemort back then?
My God. Winnie the Pooh has been working out so hard! What's his exercise routine? What kind of roids does he take? Woe to Christopher Robin if he ever lets Pooh go for the sake of A Fish In The Sea.
Yes, as the JungleBook teaches us. You gotta have all the simple bear necessities!
Of course, Arctodus hung up a sign that stated "No Grizzlies Need Apply" and it worked out pretty well for him. He didn't need to build a wall, and force others to pay for it.
Still, for all the incredible power these Ursines wield. They cannot escape the same woes that plague the common man.
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None I'm aware of, but given the number of teeth marks found in bones and cases of Bones being bitten right through with those being feeding marks (thus the bear wasn't chomping down as hard as it could), it had to be a lot. Polar bears with far less robust skulls and smaller size can regularly chomp down at over 1,200 psi. I'd imagine Arctodus could easily crunch about twice that.
I've seen a few Arctodus skeletons in museum; one at the Gray Fossil Site and one at the Mammoth Fossil Site. They're very impressive, and a powerful reminder that you should never take a bear at all lightly.
Has there been the discovery of short face bear cubs that are fossilized And are on display today? Or they are still not discovered yet.
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I am not aware of any Arctodus cub skeletons on display. That said, given they are very close relation I'd say the cub would look like a bigger version of the modern spectacled (Andean short-faced) bear's cub.
yourshot.nationalgeographic.com/u/fQYSUbVfts-T7odkrFJckdiFeHvab0GWOfzhj7tYdC0uglagsDGH2mIiFSJFb_fOpMok5zjQZwVvDKSzqjXXbgDCv6Nuvz-S5Y4Hfyuv278_ibq0ii6pRJrABFbfwEPMfUDPHhgYUzY-UnlHr5GJU8uKZR6VFuDnkeLLIz3jfMDeLijqdKg6Edv8Z9ws8qe0HPoecePlFM_I_6Ccqof1YFHNnQ/
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Working on the fight alongside next chapter. Sorry for being quiet for so long. I released this to help with that.
Pretty much. One thing to keep in mind is historic predators were far less afraid of humans as their modern day counterparts are.
i.stack.imgur.com/nGMrD.gif
Pooh been hitting that protein "hunny". Now Heffalumps fear him. He ate the fish in the sea.
We as placental mammals can all sympathize with that poor bear.
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You're not solely to blame, it feels like everything has been quiet and slow lately.
Indeed, but my God, I can't stop laughing.
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Given how strong modern bears are, Arctodus probably could bend and warp some steel (nothing super thick though, let's be realistic!). Definitely could smash up a car. As for the claws they were still pretty sharp, though not as much as big cats or polar bears. Still, more than sharp enough to tear. If you got clawed across the face by an Arctodus, you probably wouldn't have a face. If the sheer force of its swing didn't cave in your skull, the claws would rend and tear the tissue, muscle, and fat from the bone.
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The bear that got hit in the nuts that’s so me
Given with all that you described about the Ursine family. I can see why you based Kaizer Ghidorah off of them.
And I can't believe neither you, or me ever referenced this video!
It gives me an idea of what if we could have a similar scene in The Bridge with Kaizer as the "bear" committing an act of petty destruction because he can, and it's what Ghidorahs do. With Gloriosa as the hapless camper pleading the "bear" to stop with exasperation.
Aria, please tell your boyfriend to stop gnawing on my stuff!
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Having just watched that video, I don't think that bear was being destructive just for the sake of being destructive; it was treating that kayak like it would anything else it smelled food from. Most likely, either the girl screaming in the background had left food inside thinking it would be safe, or had spilled something that smelled like food and the bear was investigating.
The majority of bear attacks, as well as the majority of property damage they inflict, is in the search of food. Keep in mind, humans qualify as food, but most bears would just as readily go after improperly secured supplies or available garbage. So, the best defense to keep bears out of your camp site: keep food in airtight storage, hang what food you can't keep airtight in bags away from the camp site, and above all else, take out your trash.
A bit over three decades ago, while I was in the Boy Scouts, one of my fellow campers didn't bring the trash to the pickup site before the collection time on a night when we had particularly bad goulash for dinner. This attracted two different mother bears, each with two cubs during the night. Of course, they immediately went to the area where food was prepped and served, with my tent being the closest. Everyone else got a bad scare, but I slept threw it; a couple of others who's tent was even closer ended up in mine, and one looked out just as the second mother was near my tent door; I saw the kid had jumped back the length of the tent. I was told the next morning the bear jumped further.
Why wasn't I worried? Because I had never had food in the tent, there was a back opening, and I figured I was better off not drawing attention to myself. It all worked out, and everyone got a good lesson on how important camp sanitation was.
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I wasn't saying that the bear itself in the video was breaking the kayak because it was petty, and felt like it. I was stating my idea to Tarb of having a similar scene happening in the Bridge with post-reform Kaizer as the "bear" breaking stuff because he felt like it.
Quick question; an older documentary series (Walking with Beasts) twice mentioned an animal they called a "Bear Dog". I've been assuming this is an ancestor to both Dogs and Bears, considering how far back they appeared according to the show. Is this accurate? The chart you included shows the two groups diverged fairly early on, but also implied they are relatively closely related. Am I reading it right?
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Yes you are reading it right. Where exactly the divergence points for various Caniforms occurred is a bit vague but genetic testing does seem to show bears are the closest group to living canines, followed by other groups like pinnipeds. One thing to bear in mind is Canidae as it looks now is not how they always looked. The earliest Canidae had short limbs, five digit paws, and looked more like a dog, bear, and weasel thrown into a blender. It was only after a long period of adaptation to specialize in long distance, speed endurance running they became the odd-member out amongst their terrestrial cousins.
The most basal defined Canines and Ursines are virtually indistinguishable with partially digigrade bears and plantigrade canines. Amphicyonidae or "Bear Dogs" are either ancestral to both bears and canines (depending on who you lump into the group) or they are a sister lineage to the those two's ancestor, meaning the last common ancestor of bears and canines looked a lot like them. The only small blunder Walking with Beasts made was they showed the bear dog (uncredited Cynodictis) as digigrade like a canine when in reality Amphicyonids were plantigrade like bears and the first canines.
thoughtco.com/thmb/tFxKVr0InJwX4m3oSP6y1SFMG_A=/1791x835/filters:fill(auto,1)/amphicyonSP-56a255a15f9b58b7d0c9214a.jpg
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..... I know it's a product of just how far back that's from, but looking at that picture, and covering the paws and head, the animal I'm most reminded of is a big cat. Even the front paws fits the big cat look. Then again, as I noted, it's likely from before much actual differentiation between the cats and the rest of the carnivores had a chance to set in.
Would I be correct in concluding, from this and other sources, that the last of the Credonts are modern Cetaceans?
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You wouldn't be alone. It's a mix of convergently evolved traits that result in an outside similarity (the skeletons do differ) and the fact Bear-Dogs are basal Caniforms, meaning they still have some traits from before the Caniform-Feliform split other Caniforms lost; meaning they do have some things in common with cat ancestors. One thing that affects it is typically Caniforms have bushy tails whereas Feliforms have shorter tail fur that hugs the body more, resulting in wiry looking tails. To my knowledge we have no clue what Bear-Dogs had due to lack of impressions so you'll see some versions with wiry tails and some with bushy ones.
Close but not quite. Creodonts were closest to modern Carnivorans and Pholidota (Pangolins) in terms of relation, albeit distantly. They do not appear to have any living modern descendants. Cetaceans are instead the last living carnivorous members of the Artiodactyla, a lineage of flesh eating hooved predators that included Andrewsarchus and Entelodont. Their closest living relatives as shown by DNA testing are hippos followed by pigs, giraffes, and bovids.
Creodonts superficially looked very much like later Carnivorans, just with some key differences. Aside from internal ones like tooth count (Carnivorans have more teeth), Creodonts lack several features in the wrist and shoulder that allows it to articulate and rotate. This is what allows Carnivorans like felines and ursines to use their forelimbs as weapons to claw, bash, and seize prey. Creodonts couldn't do this and thus relied on their head as their sole weapon. This often resulted in Creodonts have proportionally big heads with massive bite forces, though this came at the cost of having smaller brains and lacking features like pack hunting and endurance running.
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Pictured: Creodont, Hyaenodon
By comparison, Cetacean ancestors might have also had huge heads but they have hooves, like this Pakicetus
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