STL Science Center

STL Science Center

21 January 2018

Always Short Faced Bears

In general a lot of the pages and videos relating facts about extinct giant bears very vaguely name those bears "short-faced bears". Commonly, this is the name that is associated with the genus Arctodus, though the common name is often applied to Arctotherium as well. The name, when specifically referring to Arctotherium is typically amended to include the continent as well; South American Short-faced Bear. This article on LiveScience follows this trend as well, but does draw a very clear line by only discussing Arctotherium within the article. Many fact page online do not host pages for Arctotherium specifically, or do not add much information beyond what is available on Wikipedia. Interestingly, there is a very useful image that contains a lot of facts about the bear (specifically A. angustidens) shown as a layout in an issue of Epoca, a Brazilian magazine, from 2011. You may need a translator to find it useful. Also, feel free to correct this; there are three Epoca Magazines globally and the archives are not searchable for any of them.

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