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Extinct California grizzly bear were n’t the gargantuan , blood - thirsty " hypercarnivores " humans made them out to be , unexampled research has found .
It turns out that the once - abundantgrizzly bearswere mostly vegetarian and only occasionally indulged in livestock after European coloniser and American settler began farming in California . wayward to popular belief at the time , these grizzlies also did n’t grow to monstrous proportionality and rarely , if ever , angle the scales at the often - cited number of 2,000 pounds ( 900 kilo ) .
California grizzly bears (Ursus arctos californicus) were similar in size to grizzlies found in Yellowstone National Park and interior Alaska today.
The last reliable sighting of a California grizzly bear ( Ursus arctos californicus ) dates to 1924 , and the race of brown bear likely went extinct soon after . Historical sources consistently paint California grizzlies as homicidal beasts — but these records are more precise representation of prevailing attitudes toward wildlife at the time than they are of the bears themselves , according to a study published Wednesday ( Jan. 10 ) in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B.
" By the time the California silvertip go out , it had been sport in a vast archive of written document and images , " which suggested the bear attacked people and decimated farm animal , research worker wrote in the study . " While these thing were unfeigned in some path , it was certainly not the whole story , " lead authorAlexis Mychajliw , an adjunct professor of biology and environmental bailiwick at Middlebury College in Vermont , distinguish Live Science in an electronic mail .
farm mushroom across the state during the Spanish Missions and Mexican Rancho period , between 1769 and 1848 , driving grizzlies into shrinking air pocket of home ground . The Gold Rush of 1849 , follow by California ’s entrance fee as a U.S. state in 1850 , sparked waves of in-migration that put further pressure on bears .
Historical accounts portrayed California grizzly bears as aggressive “hypercarnivores."
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For the cogitation , the researchers measured the copiousness of unchanging version , or isotope , of N and C in California Ursus horribilis skin and finger cymbals . Isotopesvary look on the nutrient sourceand are incorporated into an beast ’s tissue via its dieting , meaning they can bring out what the animate being eat .
The results signal that grey-headed bear were mostly veggie both before and after the first Europeans arrived in the state in 1542 , which is ordered with the dieting of modern dark-brown bears .
But California grizzlies more than doubled their inwardness use after the first settlers arrived . kernel from farm animal and wild sublunar beast spud up from 9 % of their diet before 1542 to 26 % after Europeans set foot in California , according to the study . " The bears in all likelihood increased kernel consumption due to landscape painting change pair with the comer of a novel source of protein — livestock , " Mychajliw said .
This dietary shift was inflate in contemporary accounts , which advance widespread persecution of California grizzly bear and eventually led to their extermination , consort to the cogitation .
newspaper publisher also wildly overdo the size of California grizzly bear . When the investigator measured skull and tooth from instinctive chronicle collections , they found the extinct bears were n’t any larger than grey-headed bears ( Ursus arctos horribilis ) that exist in North America today and the modal one in all probability weighed around 440 pounds ( 200 kg ) .
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Historical overestimates could be due to hunters targeting the biggest bear . " The bear report in newspaper clippings were often killed as trophies , as part of promotional material stunts , or even sold for meat , " the research worker wrote in the field . " Therefore , there were both monetary and reputational bonus to both capture the big animals potential and to magnify the sizing and aggression of captured animate being . "
The researchers foreground the sad story of Monarch , a California grizzly bear catch Union of Pasadena in 1889 as part of a publishing stunt . Convinced that grizzly bear were rapacious marrow - eater , zookeepers feed Monarch a productive diet of raw squawk , apples and biscuits , which caused the bear to become obese and grow degenerative arthritis . " When Monarch died he weigh 1,127 lb ( 511.2 kilogram ) , more than twice the size of it of the intermediate California grizzly in our sampling , " the researchers wrote .
