CARNIVORA. 3! .") 



( U. etruscus), while small detached teeth occur in the Red Crag 

 of Suffolk. The most important and best known extinct species 

 in Europe, however, is the great cave bear (Ursus spelceus), 

 which first appears in the Cromer Forest Bed and seems to 

 have ranged over the whole of Europe, though possibly not 

 extending to Ireland, during the Pleistocene period. Complete 

 skeletons' of old individuals are common in some of the caverns 

 of Franconia and Moravia, where the bones are mingled with a 

 black dust apparently resulting from the decomposition of the 

 carcases. The animals seem to have retreated to the caverns to 

 die. Numerous remains are also discovered in the lower layers 

 of the British cavern deposits, and the species was undoubtedly 

 contemporaneous with " River-Drift Man " in this country, if 

 not also with his successor '' Cave Man." In this large animal 

 the crown of the molars exhibits very complex small foldings 

 and crimpings, while pm. 1 to 3 are entirely lost in the adult, 

 and the lower pm. 4 is complicated by a small antero-internal 

 tubercle. The common brown bear ( U. arctos) also had a much 

 wider range in Europe in Pleistocene and Prehistoric times 

 than at present, characteristic skulls and jaws having been 

 found in superficial deposits in England, Wales, Scotland, and 

 Ireland ; and the animal does not seem to have been extermi- 

 nated in Britain until shortly before the Norman Conquest. 

 It is also noteworthy that a mandibular ramus much like that 

 of the U. arctos is known from a cavern in Malta this group 

 of islands being a remnant of the old land-barrier between 

 Europe and Africa which seems to have existed towards the 

 end of the Pliocene period. 



Ursus spelceus does not appear to have reached North 

 America, and the remains of the same genus found in the 

 Pleistocene of that country present no special features of interest. 

 In the Pampa Formation (Pleistocene) of South America, how- 

 ever, there occur skeletons of a remarkable extinct bear-like 

 animal of large size, which differs from Ursus in the relatively 

 larger dimensions of the upper sectorial tooth, the less elongated 

 shape of the molars, and in the extreme shortness of the snout 

 which causes the diminutive pm. 1 to 3 to be crowded. The 

 best known species, Arctotheriitm bonaeriense, from the province 



