UNGAVA BROWN BEAR

[King Kodiak]

UNGAVA BROWN BEAR (URSUS ARCTOS UNGAVAESIS)

The Ungava brown bear is an extinct population of brown bear that inhabited the forests of northern Quebec and Labrador until the early 20th century, and is thus also known as the "Labrador grizzly bear",[2]and "Labrador-Ungava grizzly", and due one of the first scientific evidences for its existence coming from Okak Island, the "Okak grizzly". Reports of its existence were doubtful at best, until a skull was unearthed by anthropologist Steven Cox in 1975.[1]

DISTRUBUTION

The Ungava brown bear originally occurred in the northern part of the Labrador Peninsula known as the Ungava Peninsula in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Labrador. Its habitat was similar to other grizzly bears, including boreal forest and tundra.[3

DISCOVERY

Until concrete evidence suggesting its existence was discovered in 1975, biologists typically discounted the idea that a brown bear had once roamed northern Quebec. Various reports of brown bears from 1900 to 1950 were written off as color morphs of the more common American black bear.[1][4]

EARLY EVIDENCE

One of the earliest pieces of evidence supporting the existence of a brown bear in Labrador is a map of the region drawn in 1550 by French cartographer Pierre Desceliers, which depicts three bears on the coast. One bear is white and is certainly a polar bear, while the other two are brown.[2]

In the late 1700s, Labrador area trader George Cartwright wrote in his journal of a bear with markings consistent to those of young grizzly bears:[2][5]

The beasts, are bears both black and white (of the latter I am told there are two kinds, one of which have a white ring around their necks... "They are very ferocious,"...

— George Cartwright, [5]

Fur trappers' reports from local Moravian mission posts indicate that brown bear pelts were regularly recorded from the 1830s to the 1850's.[4]

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

The first photographic evidence of bears in Labrador dates to 1910. American ethnologist and northern explorer William Brooks Cabot made several visits to the Labrador region between 1899 and 1925, studying the Innu people. While on a canoeing expedition with Innu hunters, Cabot came upon and photographed a bear skull mounted on a pole. Upon examination of this photograph, by comparing it to other bear skulls, Harvard anthropologists Arthur Spiess and Stephen Loring concluded in 2007 that the skull belonged to a small brown bear.[3]

OKAK EXCAVATION

In the summer of 1975, Harvard anthropologist Steven Cox discovered a small bear skull while excavating an Inuit midden on Okak Island in Labrador. The specimen consists of a nearly complete cranium, as well as several molars. The skull is the property of the Province of Newfoundlandand is currently held in the Newfoundland Museum. By studying wear on the molars, Cox determined that the skull belonged to a full-grown but small female grizzly bear.[1] The discovery of more bear bones in the area is unlikely, due to the Innu practice of consuming, utilizing or otherwise disposing of every part of hunted animals.[3]

EXTINCTION

is not known exactly when the Ungava brown bear died out, but reports of their sightings slowly declined throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and the population was most likely extinct by the latter part of the 20th century,[1] at least partly due to persecution by fur trappers.[2]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungava_brown_bear

DISCOVERY MADE BY LIGERRULES.

[King Kodiak]

A skull photographed by William Brooks Cabot in 1910, and described under Ursus arctos ungavaesis



LABRADOR PENINSULA

[brobear]

Pretty-much the same info here: animals.fandom.com/wiki/Ungava_Brown_Bear

Ungava Brown Bear

The Ungava brown bear, or Labrador grizzly bear, is an extinct population of brown bear that inhabited the forests of northern Quebecand Labrador until the early 20th century. Reports of its existence were doubtful at best, until a skull was unearthed by anthropologist Steven Cox in 1975.

[brobear]

retrieverman.net/tag/ungava-brown-bear/

Natural History
by Scottie Westfall - The Eastern brown bear.

The brown bear of North America is usually called a grizzly bear, but it is part of a species that once ranged across the Northern Hemisphere from Ireland to Kentucky. Yes, at the end of the Pleistocene, this species expanded its range through a broad swathe of North America. This eastern population apparently did not exist into historic times, for the first accounts of these bears are all from early explorers entering the West or the Great Plains.

But there was a population of brown bears that lived on in the East until historic times. This population was not documented fully, though, until it was extirpated.

In Northern Quebec and Labrador, there were always accounts of anomalous bears that went on into the twentieth century. Farley Mowat documented much of this evidence in Sea of Slaughter, and the most compelling evidence in Mowat’s text is an off-line by George Cartwright in which he describes a bear with a white ring around its neck. This is an accurate description of a brown bear cub.

However, Mowat was aware of a discovery of a female brown bear skull on Okaka Island by anthropologist Steven Cox. The find was buried in an Inuit midden, and from this discovery, it has become accepted that brown bears lived in Northern Quebec and Labrador until the twentieth century. This form of brown bear is sometimes called “the Ungava brown bear,” but no one has attempted to give it a scientific name, simply because it was probably an Eastern extension of the grizzly bear population.

This bear was probably killed off for its hide and because it caused great conflicts with people.

This brown bear, though, was the last brown bear of Eastern North America. It has never been clear to me why the brown bears of Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky became extinct. It usually said that brown bears prefer more open habitat than black bears do, but brown bear live very nicely in forests on the West Coasts and in Europe.

We do know that Native America populations in the East were fairly dense, and if these late Pleistocene-early Holocene bears were as much a problem to live with as grizzly bears can be, it would make sense that humans would have extirpated them from their settlements.

But the truth is we really don’t know why the brown bear became extinct from its eastern range. It did, however, hold on in the far reaches of Quebec and Labrador until about a century or so ago.

[brobear]

UNGAVA BROWN BEAR (URSUS ARCTOS UNGAVAESIS) = Nice find King Kodiak.

[brobear]

Despite biologists who scoff at such a notion, there is a substantial body of evidence suggesting that a subspecies of grizzly once inhabited the remote forests of northern Quebec and eastern Labrador.
In 1550, French cartographer Pierre Desceliers drew the Desceliers Map, which shows three bears along the coast of Labrador. One is white and is obviously a polar bear, but the other two are brown. Both are the same size as the polar bear. According to the experts, only black bears and polar bears inhabit the region.
In the late 1700s, Captain George Cartwright,ador, wrote of a be one of the first English settlers in Labrador, wrote of a bear species in the area that was quite different from the polar and black bears, describing it as "a kind of bear very ferocious, having a white ring around its neck." Young grizzlies often have such a marking.
Modern natives of the area tell of the Great Bear of the Montagnais, a large, brown, and dangerous bear that used to live as far south as the Mealy Mountains of southern Labrador.
By the 19th century, the Hudson Bay Company had trading posts along the coast of Labrador and northern Quebec. One of its traders, John Maclean, worked for the Bay for six years at Fort Chimo on the southern shore of Ungava Bay. In his district report for 1837 to 1838, he lists three types of bear skins: black, Arctic ( polar ), and "grissle." And this description was from a trader who had spent four years in British Columbia and knew well what a "grissle" bear's hide looked like. He noted in a book about his years at Ungava Bay that "when we consider the great extent of country that intervenes between Ungava and the far west, it seems inexplicable that the grisly bear should be found in so insulated a situation... the fact of their being there, however, does not admit of a doubt, for I have traded and sent to England several of their skins."
But is it really so unusual to expect a grizzly 500 miles ( 758 km ) east of its regular range? In the far north, grizzlies have been found 300 miles ( 455 km ) north of where biologists say they should be, and there is really no reason that grizzlies could not have spread from Southampton Island - their known easternmost limit - east to the coast of northern Quebec at one time.
And the trading records are hard to dispute. For example, Hudson Bay records for 1839 at Fort Chimo record that 1 black bear skin and 4 "grey bears" skins were traded. The Hudson Bay Company was the acknowledged expert in furtrading in Canada, so it is unlikely that one of its traders would be confused when it came to bear skins.
Captain William Kennedy, who worked in the Ungava District in the 1860s, stated that a variety of grizzly skins were traded at the Fort Chimo, Fort Nascapie, and George River posts.
In addition to the Hudson Bay posts, there were a string of Moravian missions along the Labrador coast. Their records show that the Moravians had regularly traded skins of "grey" or "grizzly" bears for many decades, buying the last one in 1914. Indeed, by the late 1800s it appeared that the Ungava brown bear was becoming rare.
Ethnologist L.M.Turner stayed at Fort Chimo from 1882 to 1884 and stated that "the brown or barren-ground bear appears to be restricted to a narrow area and is not plentiful."
A.P.Lowe, a geologist who visited Labrador between 1892 and 1895, reported that "specimens of the barren-ground bear are obtained only at infrequent intervals... skins are brought at intervals to Fort Chimo where the Indians have afavorable chance to kill ( one of these bears ). On other occasions they leave it alone, having a great respect for, and fear, of its ferocity and size."
Around 1900, an independent trader named Martin Hunter, who owned a trading post on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, brought some large brown bear skins that came from southern Labrador. He reported that they were of "immense size... One skin I got measured seven feet ( 2 m ) broad by nine feet ( 3 m ) long."
In the Winter of 1905, American traveler Dillon Wallace spent some time at Fort Chimo and reported that "a very large and ferocious brown bear... inhabits the barrens to the eastward of George River." He stated that traders told him "the hair was very long, li ght brown in color, silver tipped and of a very different species from the polar or black bear."
The Ungava brown bear, whatever species or subspecies it was, appears to have died out by the early 1900s. Intriguing evidence of its former existence came to light in 1975, however, when Harvard anthropologist Steven Cox unearthed the skull of a young female bear while excavating a late 18th-century Inuit midden at Okak Bay on the Labrador coast. The skull was identified as that of a grizzly.

[King Kodiak]

Further Evidence about the Barren-Ground Grizzly Bear in Northeast Labrador and Quebec


academic.oup.com/jmammal/article-abstract/35/3/345/989248?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[brobear]

Recently believed to be a myth.