Three and a half million year old bears with sweet tooth for berries discovered

New Delhi : Not one but two 3.5-million-year-old bears had sweet tooth for berries, found Paleontologists. They have discovered ancient teeth with cavities that serve as evidence.

“This is evidence of the most northerly record for primitive bears, and provides an idea of what the ancestor of modern bears may have looked like,” says Dr. Xiaoming Wang, lead author of the study and Head of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA).

“Just as interesting is the presence of dental caries, showing that oral infections have a long evolutionary history in the animals, which can tell us about their sugary diet, presumably from berries. This is the first and earliest documented occurrence of high-calorie diet in basal bears, likely related to fat storage in preparation for the harsh Arctic winters.”

The first pieces of a bears skulls’ were found in the 1990s. During excavations over the last 14 years, paleontologists have recovered more fragments of the skull, a jaw, and other skeleton fragments.

On placing the pieces together, researchers found that they belong to two beers - one was five to seven years old and the other was older. Both didn’t seem to brush their teeth, judging from the cavities.

“It is a significant find, in part because all other ancient fossil ursine bears, and even some modern bear species like the sloth bear and sun bear, are associated with lower-latitude, milder habitats,” says co-author Dr. Natalia Rybczynski, a Research Associate and paleontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature. “So, the Ellesmere bear is important because it suggests that the capacity to exploit the harshest, most northern forests on the planet is not an innovation of modern grizzlies and black bears, but may have characterized the ursine lineage from its beginning.”