Indarctos
Indarctos is an extinct genus of bear, present in Africa, North America, and Eurasia during the Miocene. It was present from ~11.1 to 5.3 Ma, existing for approximately 6.2 million years.

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- AgriotheriiniPBDB
- Diet
- herbivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ursidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Ursidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At least 7.1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 12.5 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 16.3 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
32 occurrences of Indarctos on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
32 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
9 formations
- Sahabi Formation2
- Ash Hollow Formation · Ogallala Group1
- Muddy Creek Formation1
- Rattlesnake Formation1
- Coal Valley Formation1
- Mulholland Formation1
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The named rock units Indarctos has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 22 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Indarctos and its relatives
MioceneWhere Indarctos and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
443 taxa- Ictitherium7 sites
- Martes6 sites
- Monosaulax6 sites
- Neocricetodon6 sites
- Alilepus5 sites
- Brachyrhizomys5 sites
- Hipparion5 sites
- Hyotherium5 sites
- Hystrix5 sites
- Laccopithecus robustus5 sites
- Machairodus5 sites
- Metacervulus5 sites
- Muntiacus5 sites
- Mustelidae5 sites
- Parapodemus5 sites
- Potamochoerus5 sites
- Pseudaelurus5 sites
- Selenoportax5 sites
- Sivaonyx bathygnathus5 sites
- Vulpes stenognathus5 sites
- Albanensia4 sites
- Anourosorex oblongus4 sites
- Blarinella4 sites
- Bovidae4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 30 sites for Indarctos, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
22 references- A preliminary report on Carnivora from the Ramapithecus locality, Lufeng, Yunnan7
- The Middle Pliocene Mammalian Fauna from Smiths Valley, Nevada3
- Preliminary observations on Carnivora from the Sahabi Formation (Libya)2
- Pliocene mammals of southeast Oregon and adjacent Idaho2
- Associatia de vertebrate din punctul fosilifer Sarmatian mediu Otovasca (Mun. Chisinau) si importanta oor biostratigraphfica1
- Late Miocene large mammals from Yulafli, Thrace region, Turkey, and their biogeographic implications1
- Late Tertiary basins and vertebrate faunas along the Nevada-Utah border1
- Ursidae1
- Upper Cenozoic bio-magnetic stratigraphy of Central Asian mammalian localities1
- Les Gisements de mammifères du Miocène supérieur de Kemiklitepe, Turquie: 6. Hyracoidea1
- Stop 15: Early Hemphillian faunas of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles1
- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Ogallala Group in Nebraska1
Each of the 32 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 10 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Indarctos
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Indarctos was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Indarctos”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itAgriotheriini through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Pilgrim 1913