Okay, so I'm a little tired of reading all the ice-age articles that like to lay claim that "Arctodus simus was the largest bear of all time!" (nearly every article I've read that pertains to this bear, claims this!) So why am I tired of reading it? Because I'm almost positive that that claim is wrong, here is why....

I at first took in that scientific information without question because I'm not a scientist, I'm just a simple artist... so what do I know about this kinda stuff.

Than I started making a large poster that documented every single animal that lived in North America 13,000 years ago, and they were all shown to scale, next to each other (over 100 species). The problem was, I couldn't get that damn Arctodus to look 500 lbs heavier than my 1500 lb polar bear. Arctodus simus yukonensis (the same reference specimen I used to make my arctodus) supposidly tipped the scales at 2,000 lbs.

I contacted another paleo-artist named Carl Buell, who helped me make the Arctodus simus in the first place, to see if something was wrong with my Arctodus (like, maybe he needs over 500 lbs more of body fat!?!?)

His reply email explained how scientists rarely get to work with living animals (implying that they aren't good at guessing honest weights), and that he himself had already been aware that Arctodus body doesn't work out to be a 2,000 lb animal, and in actuality he estimated it probably rarely exceeded 1200 lbs (though he emphasized how it probably looked like it weighed a ton, because it was a solid muscular 1,200 lbs)... he added that humans like to think of ourselves as underdogs, and because of it we always get excited with big animals and we have a tendency to "overestimate"

After he sent me that email I did a little bit of digging on how that 2,000 lb weight estimate was achieved. It turns out the scientists used the femur of Arctodus simus yukonensis, and measured its girth, than they simply slapped on the ratio used to calculate autumn body weight of Grizzly bears based on femur girth, and BOOM 2,000 lbs of Heavy weight bear!!!!!!!! (Autumn weight is the fattest a bear can get, because at that point in time, they have "fattened up" for winter)

The problem is, Arctodus has HUGE legs for such a proportionately "small" body, and you can't take a big fat Arctodus femur, and expect to accurately estimate its weight based on the body ratios of a grizzly bear (which is built very differently from Arctodus) --- Furthermore I doubt Arctodus "fattened up" for the winter in a manner that was as extreme as grizzly bears do it. Arctodus was an open plains pacer, and it needed to stay relatively trim and fit all year around so that it could catch its prey, and cover vast distances to find food.

I think the scientists were so excited when they got to estimate the weight of such a "huge beast" (it is 5'6 at the shoulder after all, so it MUST be super heavy... right?) that they simply didn't feel like putting their estimation method into question... and nobody else does either which is silly, because every description also mentions how thinly built Arctodus was....




In my comparison image, it shows the late-summer weight of a "large" (but not record setting) modern Polar bear, opposite the polar bear is the largest specimen ever found of Arctodus simus, and behind the polar bear is an extinct pleistocene sub-species of polar bear (which kinda looked like a grizzly/polar hybrid, because it had several features in common with grizzlies as well).... --- In the autumn, both bears would be a little fatter, but I didn't want to show them super fat, I wanted to show them in their "healthiest" typical trim. No matter what season they are showed in though, even the modern polar bear is a "heavier set" animal than Arctodus, and it is capable of gaining more weight in fat, and even though it is shorter at the shoulder, it is longer, and I bet in the Pleistocene it was almost ALWAYS heavier. (today a typical polar bear would be smaller than a typical Arctodus though, and only the "larger" specimens of modern polars would exceed the Arctodus)

Any Paleo junkies out there, tell me what you think about this, because I'm sure you have heard of the 2,000 lb weight claims of Arctodus simus. If you think the scientific consensus is legit, and that I'm wrong, or missing something big, please feel free to share your reasoning, as well as a possible demonstration with your own artwork.