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Emmense Bear That Hunted The Mammoth's
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Palaeontologist William Jacob Holland (Director of the Pittsburgh Carnegie Museum) authored “A Preliminary Account of the Pleistocene Fauna discovered in a Cave Opened at Frankstown, Pennsylvania, in April and May, 1907” which was published in the Annals of the Carnegie Museum in 1908. Workers discovered the site during limestone quarrying near Hollidaysburg and it yielded thousands of bones spanning a long period of time up to 300,000 years ago.
Key fossils recovered from the site included: bones from American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) belonging to one adult and up to six youngsters. Not actually mammoths, but related; Fragmentary remains of several giant short-faced bears (Arctodus haplodon, later renamed Arctodus pristinus): a few teeth from the giant ground sloth Megalonyx; fragmentary teeth and jaw bones from extinct tapirs and peccaries; and the remains of birds, bats, bison, deer, snakes, and wolves in abundance,
Holland was particularly interested in the association between the bones of the enormous bear and many young mastodons, speculating that the site had once been a natural trap used by the bears:
“The presence of the remains of numerous infant mastodons and of various species of artiodactyles in the cave, associated with the remains of the huge Arctodus haplodon, suggests that the latter, at a time when what later became a sealed cavern was still an open cleft in the rocks, preyed upon young mastodons, which they may have separated from their mothers and chased over the edge of the cliff-like wall. Falling to the bottom they became an easy prey to the great bears, just as calves to-day fall a prey both to the black bear and to the grizzly. In like manner these bears dragged into this place, which was their lair, in order to feed their young, the carcasses of deer and other hoofed animals. Or they may have driven them over the rocks, as it is possible to imagine that the young mastodons were driven. Arctodus haplodon was a bear somewhat larger than the grizzly and in weight might well have been quite equal, if not superior, to a young mastodon, judging from the size of the jaws of the latter which we possess. A young mastodon could not have been larger than a baby elephant and probably was not more than three and a half feet in height.”
Key fossils recovered from the site included: bones from American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) belonging to one adult and up to six youngsters. Not actually mammoths, but related; Fragmentary remains of several giant short-faced bears (Arctodus haplodon, later renamed Arctodus pristinus): a few teeth from the giant ground sloth Megalonyx; fragmentary teeth and jaw bones from extinct tapirs and peccaries; and the remains of birds, bats, bison, deer, snakes, and wolves in abundance,
Holland was particularly interested in the association between the bones of the enormous bear and many young mastodons, speculating that the site had once been a natural trap used by the bears:
“The presence of the remains of numerous infant mastodons and of various species of artiodactyles in the cave, associated with the remains of the huge Arctodus haplodon, suggests that the latter, at a time when what later became a sealed cavern was still an open cleft in the rocks, preyed upon young mastodons, which they may have separated from their mothers and chased over the edge of the cliff-like wall. Falling to the bottom they became an easy prey to the great bears, just as calves to-day fall a prey both to the black bear and to the grizzly. In like manner these bears dragged into this place, which was their lair, in order to feed their young, the carcasses of deer and other hoofed animals. Or they may have driven them over the rocks, as it is possible to imagine that the young mastodons were driven. Arctodus haplodon was a bear somewhat larger than the grizzly and in weight might well have been quite equal, if not superior, to a young mastodon, judging from the size of the jaws of the latter which we possess. A young mastodon could not have been larger than a baby elephant and probably was not more than three and a half feet in height.”
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