Etruscan bear

English

A fossilized Etruscan bear skull

Noun

Etruscan bear (plural Etruscan bears)

1. An extinct species of bear, †Ursus etruscus, endemic to Europe, Asia and North Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene (approximately 5.3 million to 100,000 years ago).
   • 1968 [Transaction Publishers], Björn Kurtén, Pleistocene Mammals of Europe, 2017, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), page 120,

     The first Etruscan bears were small, about the size of the modern Asiatic black bear; but they tended to increase in size and the terminal forms were as large as a brown bear.

   • 2012, Andrew E. Derocher, Polar Bears, Johns Hopkins University Press, page 36:

     About 2.5 million years ago the Auvergne bear gave rise to the Etruscan bear. Fossil remains from Spain, France, Italy, and China suggest that Etruscan bears were about the size of modern American black bears and were gradually increasing in size. […] The Etruscan bear, about 2 million years ago, gave us the grizzly bear.

   • 2018, Tim Flannery, Luigi Boitani, Europe: A Natural History, Text Publishing, page 140:

     It^{[the Auvergne bear]} appears to have given rise to the Etruscan bear (Ursus etruscus), which is so similar to the Asian black bear that some researchers consider them to be one and the same. In a fairytalelike twist, the Etruscan bear gave rise to Europe's three bears of yore: the brown bear, the cave bear and the polar bear.

Translations

extinct species of bear

• French: ours étrusque m
• Italian: orso etrusco m

References

• Ursus etruscus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Ursus etruscus at Paleobiology Database