In the Shadow of the Sabertooth. Doug Peacock

of pot roast—carries with him a valuable awareness of vulnerability that we lack today in our safe, sterilized woodlots of well-managed white-tail deer and high-powered rifles. That value, I believe, lies in perceiving authentic risk that in turns triggers an appropriate survival response. In such a cosmos, you hear more, see more and smell more. Today’s polluted global winds dilute the olfactory discernment of the shadow of the sabertooth. I’m saying maybe we could use some of this biological insecurity and acuity in today’s world.

      It is within that context I consider the short-faced bear.

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      I would think the short-faced bear potential to limit early American demographics too important an issue to be ignored by either archaeologists or paleontologists, although, for the most part, the academics avoid specific speculation. I searched the professional literature for clues and illumination. The venerated vertebrate paleontologist Bjorn Kurten once called Arctodus simus “the most powerful predator in the Pleistocene fauna of North America.” Here is a vulnerable windmill, like “Clovis First,” that makes for great press and it’s something to tilt against. Paleontology often does a good job of debunking popular misconceptions. Archaeology scarcely mentions human/short-faced bear interactions. Paleontology does so only indirectly in a few technical studies—the sort that I endeavor to steer clear of in this book. The reasons are simply to avoid getting snagged in technical detail as well as an acknowledgement of my layman limitations.

      Nonetheless, I reluctantly grabbed a handful of recent papers as an example. The representation is probably biased because the ones that caught my attention were either very enlightening or exasperating. They are, however, about the only source for beginning a discussion. The scientist’s conclusions are examined in a stew of my own experiences with grizzly bears. Here’s a summary of three nearly random, technical articles that help paint the panorama. All challenge A. simus’s reputation as a predator.

      Spanish paleontologists measured a small number of bone pieces and fragments of short-faced bear fossils and inferred that the bear was not short-faced, long-legged or predacious. One question, which was never asked, is what determines what a bear eats? The answer is behavior, especially aggression, not snout size nor the cut of their omnivore teeth. Animal protein is universally preferred over vegetation. Aggression and dominance played a huge role, especially around the kill sites of Pleistocene carnivores. Predation is opportunistic.

      The study purported to compare A. simus to the grizzly bear implying the short-faced bear was a slow moving vegetarian. But grizzlies can outrun racehorses over a short distance and bring down adult elk, caribou, moose and the calves of all these creatures. The short-faced bear evolved in an America without people—grizzlies did not. From my own observations, brown bear routinely displace wolves, cougars and, less commonly, humans from carcasses, presumably because the bear has reason to fear humans. The short-faced bear had no reason to fear H. sapiens because it had never seen one until the late autumn of its species some 13,000 to 30,000 years ago. Since there is no record whatsoever of human interaction with any of these big prehistoric carnivores (there is an anecdotal rumor of a New Mexico Clovis point lodged in a dire wolf’s jaw), my account of such relationships is speculative, based on my own experience with existing American carnivores—polar bears, wolves, cougars, jaguars and brown bears—the most dangerous of which, statistically, is the grizzly (it’s a misleading stat; moose are more of a threat to people).

      But all these modern beasts are pussycats compared with those extinct predators.

      Other paleontologists studied the teeth, along with some skeletal morphology, of Arctodus simus and concluded the bear’s diet largely consisted of coarse foliage by unselective grazing. I ended up wondering how any bear could survive the Beringian winter by unselected grazing of coarse foliage.