Two Skulls Help Unlock Secrets to Ancient Short-nosed Bears
by Stephanie Pappas
Two partial skulls of an ancient short-faced bear species, a potential ancestor to the biggest bears that ever lived, have been discovered in northeastern Tennessee. The finds represent additional evidence of Plionarctos, a type of bear that went extinct about 3 million years ago, at the Gray Fossil Site in Gray, Tenn. The earlier discoveries consisted of only a small chunk of lower jaw with teeth, and an isolated tooth of a separate individual. The new discovery is most of the skull of an older adult and a portion of an upper jaw of a relatively young bear of the same species. “The skull was pretty mashed up,” Shawn Haugrud, a preparator at the site, told LiveScience. Haugrud did the painstaking work to glue the crushed skull back together again… (read more: Live Science) (image: Blaine Shubert, ETSU)
