Fossil Ursids of the National Park Service

Here we are, a little later than usual for the annual "Fossil [Group] of the National Park Service" but present nonetheless. I decided to get in another group of carnivorans, this time the bears (Ursidae). If you've been here for the cats and dogs, you can probably guess the basic shape of things: a few records earlier in the Cenozoic, then a big slug in the Pleistocene into the Holocene, with many of the records representing living species. That is indeed how it goes with the bears as well, with a couple of quirks: the bear record goes back as far as the dog record, into the Chadronian (Late Eocene), but is never as diverse as the records for either cats or dogs. Essentially you get a couple of genera or species in a formation, and that's about it. Bears, it seems, have never felt the need to be profuse about the business of being bears. It's not quite "one-bear-fits-all", but bears favor generalism, and there's only room for so many species of generalists in one place and time.