Page created on : August 26, 1998
Last updated : October 28, 2006

The short-faced bear, sometimes called the «bulldog bear», was the largest land carnivore in North America during the ice age.

Unusually tall, it reached nearly 1.5 meters at the shoulder when walking and 3.4 meters when up on its hind legs. Taller than a brown bear, the short-faced bear was not as heavily built, with limbs, particularly the hind legs, which were longer and more slender. With a relatively short face lacking a well-marked forehead, it had a short, broad muzzle resembling a lion rather than any living North American bear.

The short-faced bear became widespread in western North America about 1 million years ago, occupying higher, welldrained grasslands west of the Mississippi River. Its northern range reached the Yukon and Alaska, indicated by a leg bone and partial skull from frozen silt found near Dawson City, Yukon dating almost 30,000 years ago. Other recorded Canadian specimens are from Old Crow Basin and Sixtymile in the Yukon, Edmonton AB and Lebret SK.

The short-faced bear died out toward the close of the last glaciation, partly because of the earling extinction of some of its large herbivorous prey, and partly due to increased competition with brown bears, which entered North America some 200,000 to 130,000 years ago during the Illinoian glaciation. «Tremarctos ornatus», the spectacled bear of South America, is the closest living relative of this extinct mammal.