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Does something standing 12 feet tall, weighing 1500lbs, and that can travel 28 miles per hour entice you? How about limb crushing, vice like teeth designed for shearing? Would you be afraid??

In quaternary north America, the late pleistocene represents a peak of ursid diversity

Where was it located?
The giant short faced bear, also known as the ‘bulldog bear’, was mostly located west of Mississippi; and up, down and around the Rocky Mountains. It was also known in other areas across the continent, including Mexico and Alaska. However, around 11 or 12 thousand years ago, something strange happened. The climate changed, there was a loss of diet, and habitat; as well as, combinations of other factors. Including competition with humans and herbivores. The giant short faced bear went extinct.

The giant short faced bears scientific name arctodus, actually came from Greek. It means “bear tooth”

Domination: food, and origin(s)
Its diet would have varied with its range. And, because its build didn’t differ much from modern bears. It’s believed like most bears nowadays it was omnivorous, and would have eaten significant amounts of plant matter. Eating up to an estimated 30-40lb every day, it was once the most common bears in North America.

Joseph Leidy first described it in 1854; and, its fossils were first discovered, in northern California, at the Potter creek cave 24 years later (1),(2)
Though a long time since the late pleistocene, we have only recently been discovering about its dominative force.

Bear enticement nowadays comes in the forms of black, brown, grizzly and polar. Thoughtfully 10,000 years ago, during the paleolithic times, the arctodus simius, or ‘bulldog bear’, setted president for fear factor, and fear fighting for survival.

Check it out with some more neolithic architecture today!

Cite: 1) “South Carolina Fossils” (https://doi.org/10.1038%2F020354a0). Nature. 20 (510): 354–355. 1879-08-01. Bibcode:1879Natur..20..354. (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1879Natur..20..354.). doi:10.1038/020354a0 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2F020354a0). ISSN 1476-4687 (https://search.w
orldcat.org/issn/1476-4687). S2CID 4034608 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:4034608)

2) Merriam, John C.; Stock, Chester (1925), Relationships and Structure of the Short-Faced Bear, Arctotherium, from the Pleistocene of California (https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20191008-132308406), Washington, DC: Carnegie institution of Washington, pp. 1–25

Bibliography: The Giant Short-Faced Bear”. North American Bear Center. 2018-03-02.

Arctodus”. http://www.utep.edu.

Merriam, John C.; Stock, Chester (1925), Relationships and Structure of the Short-Faced Bear, Arctotherium, from the Pleistocene of California, Washington, DC: Carnegie institution of Washington, pp. 1–25,

ScienceDaily, 13 April 2009.“Prehistoric bears ate everything and anything, just like modern cousins”. ScienceDaily.