Ursus minimus

Ursus minimus
Skull fragment of Ursus minimus in side and bottom view
Temporal occurrence
Zancleum to Gelasium
5.3 to 1.8 million years
Locations
Europe
Systematics
Order : Predators (Carnivora) Subordination : Canine (Caniformia) Family : Bears (Ursidae) Subfamily : Ursinae Genre : Ursus Type : Ursus minimus
Scientific name
Ursus minimus
Devèze & Bouillet , 1827

Ursus minimus is an extinct bear species that wasfoundin continental Europe during the Pliocene era, with the Black Sea being the eastern limit of its range. Ursus minimus is considered the common ancestor of all recent Ursus species.

anatomy

The skull of Ursus minimus measured around 25 cm, making it the smallest member of its genus and about the size of a sun bear ( Ursus malayanus ). Its physique was comparable to that of the Asian ( U. thibetanus ) and American black bears ( U. americanus ). As an early Ursus he lacked the strongly developed metatarsus and in terms of jaw morphology he resembled more primitive bears with relatively high trigonids of the fangs, such as those found in the genus Ursavus , but not in later Ursus species.

distribution and habitat

Ursus minimus inhabited Europe from the early Pliocene to the beginning of the Pleistocene . Its physique suggests that it was a forest-dwelling species.

Taxonomy and history of development

Nomenclature and species definition

Ursus minimus is one of the earliest Ursus forms. There is disagreement among rags and splinters over U. minimus as to which fossils and forms the species should comprise. As the earliest description, however , Ursus minimus has priority over possibly synonymous names; the validity of the species itself is not in doubt among paleontologists.

For the oldest fossils found by Ursus so far , there are U. minimus, the names U. boeckhi ( Schlosser, 1899 ; holotype from the Romanian Baróth-Köpecz ) and U. ruscinensis and U. avernicus pyrenaicus ( Déperet , 1890 and 1892 ; Holotypes from the French Perpignan ). Of these names, usually only U. boeckhi is granted authorization. Since U. minimus shows strong variability younger fossils tend to be smaller than older and it is also unlikely that two bears the same size inhabiting a common habitat, the research all tends Ursus -forms from the early Pleistocene as U. minimus or . to be summarized as Chronosubspecies U. minimus boeckhi .

Systematics

The predecessors of the first Ursus species were probably bears of the genus Ursavus from the Miocene , but their origin and exact identity are not known. In the middle Pliocene, the sloth bear ( Ursus ursinus ) emerged from Ursus minimus , before two clades develop at the turn from the middle to the late Pliocene: On the one hand, the smaller black bears - American black bear ( U. americanus ), Asiatic black bear ( U. thibetanus ) and sun bear ( U. malayanus ) - on the other hand, the larger brown and cave bears with brown bear ( U. arctos ), polar bear ( U. maritimus ) and the cave bear forms from U. etruscus to U. spelaeus .

supporting documents

literature

• Celine Bon, Jean-Marc Elaouf: Cave Bear Genomics in the Paleolithic Painted Cave of Chauvet-Pont d'Arc. In: Pierre Pontarotti: Evolutionary Biology. Concepts, Molecular and Morphological Evolution. Springer, 2010. ISBN 3642123392 , pp. 343-355.
• Jean Sébastien Devèze de Chabriol & Jean-Baptiste Bouillet: Essai Géologique et Minéralogique sur les Environs d'Issoire, Département du Puy-de-Dôme, et Principalement sur la Montagne de Boulade: Avec la Description et les Figures Lithographiées des Ossemens Fossiles qui y Ont Eté Recueillis. Imprimerie de Thibaud-Landriot, Clermont-Ferrand 1827.
• Stephen Herrero: Aspects of Evolution and Adaptation in American Black Bears (Ursus americanus Pallas) and Brown and Grizzly Bears (U. arctos Linne.) Of North America. In: Bears: Their Biology and Management. Vol. 2: A Selection of Papers from the Second International Conference on Bear Research and Management, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, November 6-9, 1970. IUCN Publications New Series no. 23, 1972. pp. 221-231.
• Christine Marie Janis, Kathleen Marie Scott, Louis L. Jacobs: Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America. Terrestrial Carnivores, Ungulates, and Ungulatelike Mammals. Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0521355192 .
• Björn Kurtén: Pleistocene Mammals of Europe. Aldine Transaction, Chicago 1968.
• Michael Morlo, Martin Kundrát: The first carnivoran fauna from the Ruseinium (Early Pliocene, MN 15) of Germany. In: Paläontologische Zeitschrift 75 (2), September 2001. pp. 163–187.
• Jan Wagner: Pliocene to early Middle Pleistocene ursine bears in Europe: a taxonomic overview. In: Journal of the National Museum (Prague), Natural History Series Vol. 179 (2), 2010. pp. 197–215.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Devèze & Chabriol 1827 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Janis et al. 1998 , p. 185.
3. ↑ Herrero 1972 , p. 224.
4. ↑ Morlo & Kundrat 2001 , p. 165.
5. ↑ Wagner 2010 , p. 197.
6. ↑ Bon & Elaouf 2010 , p. 351.