Tremarctos floridanus
| Tremarctos floridanus Temporal range:
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| Species: | †T. floridanus Gidley, 1928
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| †Tremarctos floridanus | |
Tremarctos floridanus, occasionally called the Florida spectacled bear or rarely Florida short-faced bear is an extinct species of bear in the family Ursidae, subfamily Tremarctinae. T. floridanus was endemic to North America from the Pliocene to Pleistocene epoch (4.9 mya—11,000 years ago), existing for approximately 4.889 million years.[1]
Environment
T. floridanus was widely distributed south of the continental ice sheet, along the Gulf Coast across through Florida and north to Tennessee, and across the southern United States to California.
Arctodus (3 million—11,000 years ago) was a contemporary and shared its habit with T. floridanus. The closest living relative of the Florida cave bear is the Spectacled Bear of South America; they are classified together with the huge short-faced bears in the family Tremarctinae. They became extinct at the end of the last ice age,10,000 years ago due to some combination of climate change and hunting by newly arrived Paleo-Indians.
Taxonomy
Originally Gidley named this animal Arctodus floridanus in 1928. It was recombined as Tremarctos floridanus by Kurten (1963), Lundelius (1972) and Kurten and Anderson (1980).[2][3]
Fossil distribution
Sites and specimen ages (not complete):
- Rock Spring Site, Orange County, Florida ~100,000—11,000 years ago.
- Arroyo Seco (CU 45), Palm Spring Formation, San Diego County, California ~4.9—1.8 Ma.
- Cumberland Cave, Allegany County, Maryland ~1.8 Ma—300,000 years ago.
- Lecanto 2A site, Citrus County, Florida paleontological sites, ~300,000—11,000 years ago.
- Ladd's Quarry Site, Bartow County, Georgia ~1.8—11,000 years ago.
References
- ^ PaleoBiology Database: Tremarctus, basic info
- ^ E. L. Lundelius. 1972. Bureau of Economic Geology Report of Investigations 77.
- ^ B. Kurten and E. Anderson. 1980. Pleistocene mammals of North America 1-442 [J. Alroy/J. Alroy/J. Alroy.
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