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I suppose that there will be a lot of inaccuracy about this hypothetic encounter based on the fact alone that the size of Arctodus is highly overestimated. You can often read that Arctodus reached a weight of 1 ton, but this is extremely unlikely. First of all there were several different subspecies of Arctodus, and they were different in size, with the biggest subspecies Arctodus simus. They showed massive sexual size dimorphism, so the females were much smaller than the males.
The estimation of 1 ton was made for the largest known specimen of Arctodus simus. Furthermore this estimation is most probably much too high. This animals had very different proportions to modern bears, and weight estimations based on limb-bones alone are not the best way. Arctodus looked mainly so huge because it had such long legs, but its body was not bigger than those of a very large modern Kodiak or Kamtchatka bear. The biggest modern polar bears even surpass clearly in mass the largest known Arctodus simus specimen, and even those are still under 1000kg.
Daniel Reed made probably one of the best Arctodus reconstruction, which is directly based on a skeleton, so the proportions are exactly right.
It shows a size comparison of the largest known specimen, but if you look at the body alone, it is not that big. I know another size comparison Daniel Reed made together with a scaled up polar bear (whose shoulder height was even a bit under the record-sizes) of about 1500 Ibs, and the polar is clearly heavier.
The weight of the largest Arctodus simus specimen we know was much more probable in the 600 Ibs range, but even among male members of the Arctodus simus subspecies the average was lesser. So even the largest ones of the largest subspecies were “only” about 600kg (what is still huge), the average was still much smaller, and the other subspecies were even smaller too. And the females were even still smaller.
Carl Buel made also some great reconstruction drawings of Arctodus in comparison with a man (a cool picture of himself) which show clearly that Arctodus was far away from being as massive as a big bull (with a weight of about 1 ton).
# krvega responds: September 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
HEY! Does anybody know when Monster Quest is gonna air SASQUATCH ATTACK 2?