Agriotherium

Agriotherium is an extinct genus of bears whose fossils are found Miocene through Pleistocene-aged strata of North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, living from ~13.6–2.5 Ma, existing for approximately 11.1 million years. Materials of the late surviving A. africanum from Africa have suggested that A. africanum died out during the early Gelasian. Agriotherium was about 2.7 metres (9 ft) in body length and weighed around 900 kilograms (1,980 lb), making it larger than most living bears. Except for the extinct subspecies of the modern polar bear Ursus maritimus tyrannus and Arctotherium, Agriotherium was, along with the short-faced bear, Arctodus simus, the largest member of terrestrial Carnivora. It had dog-like crushing teeth. A 2011 estimate that compared the bites of a few selected bears, both extant and extinct, concluded that Agriotherium had the strongest bite-force of any mammalian land-predator yet estimated. Its was an omnivore, preying on horses, camelids, rhinos, bovids, chalicotheres and small or young proboscideans as well as vegetation. Agriotherium also likely scavenged, and would not have been hesitant about stealing kills from such animals as the sabertooth cat Amphimachairodus, with whom it shared territory in both China and North America, and the feliform Barbourofelis, which it lived alongside in Texas, as evidenced by fossil deposits at Coffee Ranch.