Lesser short-faced bear

The lesser short-faced bear, Arctodus pristinus, was an extinct short-faced bear of the Pleistocene and the earlier and smaller of the two recognised species of Arctodus. Joseph Leidy described it in 1854 from finds in the Ashley Phosphate Beds of Charleston County, South Carolina. It was largely restricted to the Early Pleistocene of the eastern United States, mostly in the more densely forested thermal enclave of eastern North America, with the greatest concentration of fossils in Florida. Floridan individuals averaged around 140 kilograms, about the size of grizzly bears, although northern and western populations may have been larger. The giant short-faced bear evolved from it, though the two likely overlapped in the Middle Pleistocene. It went extinct around 300,000 years ago, probably through climate change and competition with other bears such as the black bear and Tremarctos floridanus.