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18 SPRING 2011 (continued from previous page) Geographic, Discovery, CBS and others. “During its time, this bear was the largest and most powerful meat-eater in the world,” Schubert notes. “It’s always extremely exciting to find something that’s the largest of its class and not just a little bit larger, but quite a bit larger.” Schubert, a 1994 Central Missouri alumnus, is a professor at East Tennessee State University, director of its Center of Excellence in Paleontology and curator of its Natural History Museum. He has published more than 20 articles on paleontology and has appeared multiple times on national television to talk about short-faced prehistoric bears, his specialty. For more than 14 years, Schubert and Leopoldo Soibelzon, a researcher in Argentina, have studied fossil collections for prehistoric South American, North American and European mammals. Schubert is only one of a handful of people who specialize in bear fossils in North America; Soibelzon is the only such specialist in South America. They recently analyzed the fossil remains of a bear unearthed during a hospital construction project in 1935 at La Plata City in the Buenos Aires Province and donated to the La Plata Museum. They describe the remains of this gigantic extinct creature called Artotherium angustidens in the January issue of the Journal of Paleontology. The bear stood at least 11 feet tall on its hind legs and weighed about 3,500 pounds. “It just blew my mind how big it was,” Schubert says, adding that as meat-eaters go, “nothing else even comes close.” He explains that, in comparison, “the largest record for a living bear is a male polar bear that weighed about 2,200 pounds.” The scientists calculated the giant bear’s size using bone measurements along with equations for estimating body mass. Most telling was its elephant-size humerus or upper arm bone, which had once been injured and infected. “This would have been a very large bear that probably had a bad attitude,” Schubert says. The researchers aren’t certain what caused the bear’s physical damage, but speculated it could have been from male-to-male fighting, from hunting giant ground sloths or other megafauna, or from getting into disputes with other carnivores, such as a saber-toothed cat, over food. “We think that these bears were omnivores, which means that they ate both plants and animals, but they probably ate a lot of meat,” Schubert says. “Based on their size, they were probably dominating carcasses and scaring other animals away from carcasses, even if they weren’t doing a lot of their own hunting.” He says that scientists don’t really know why South American bears became so large, but some attribute it to both a glut in prey and a lack of competition. The bears prospered after their ancestors traveled over the land bridge that developed between North and South America about 2.6 million years ago. Even the sabertoothed cat was much smaller than the giant South American short-faced bear. Over time more carnivores appeared on the South American landscape, and the giant bears became extinct. Other related large bears lived on though; some survived up until the end of the last Ice Age. The closest living relative of the extinct short-faced bears is the South American spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus), a relatively small species. The giant bear isn’t Schubert’s only recent discovery. He is part of an ETSU team that confirmed a venomous lizard called Heloderma, today found only in the hot deserts of Arizona and the tropical forests of western Mexico, roamed North America some five to seven million years ago from Working as a paleontologist has been all that Blaine Schubert hoped it would be. His work has taken him around the world, from his first excavation of a buffalo skull in Warrensburg in 1993 to a trip for his Ph.D. dissertation that took him to some of the most important sites of human ancestry in Africa.
The bear stood at least 11 feet tall on its hind legs and weighed about 3,500 pounds. “It just blew my mind how big it was.” Florida to Tennessee. Their findings are discussed in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, a leading paleontology journal. Finding the remains of such extinct monster lizards and bears continues to affirm what Schubert realized almost 20 years ago when he was a student at UCM — that digging around in the dirt could become an exciting career. Schubert and his two brothers grew up between Lowry City and Osceola, MO, on a farm owned since the mid-1800s by his mother’s family. “The country living provided the perfect environment for my brothers and me to explore nature,” he says. Both of his brothers became scientists, and when Schubert came to Central Missouri in 1989, he wanted to do the same. “At first I was undecided. I originally was leaning toward biology, but I took Dr. [John] Sheets’ class, and I became hooked on the fossil record instead.” Schubert attributes his career success to Sheets, professor emeritus of anthropology and history, and three other faculty members: John Emerson and John Nold, both in earth science, and Oz Hawksley, a retired biology professor. “They all served as my mentors and to this day, they are the best teachers I had ever had — and that’s after 11 years of college courses,” he says. “In fact, when I teach, I emulate their methods.” He says that Sheets and Emerson helped him discover his true interests. “They continually encouraged my research and helped set me on the path to graduate school.” Sheets introduced Schubert to Hawksley, who took him on a dig in an Ozark cave. “I first realized in Dr. Sheet’s and Dr. Emerson’s classes that you could do paleontology as an actual job,” says Schubert. “Before that, it was just sort of a hobby. Then Dr. Hawksley took me under his wing, and I developed a passion for bears and cave paleontology.” After he graduated from UCM in 1994, Schubert went to Northern Arizona to pursue a master’s degree. Next he went to the Illinois State Museum for three years, worked on fossil from Ozark caves, and completed a book titled Ice Age Cave Faunas in North America. He then pursued a Ph.D at the University of Arkansas on vertebrate paleoecology. He began working at East Tennessee State in 2004 and two years later, joined the faculty. Working as a paleontologist has been all that Schubert hoped it would be. “I love teaching and going on digs,” he says. His work has taken him around the world, from his first excavation of a buffalo skull in Warrensburg in 1993 to a trip for his Ph.D. dissertation that took him to some of the most important sites of human ancestry in Africa. He’s written articles published in academic journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Zoology. He’s also appeared on two of The History Channel’s most popular shows, “Monster Quest” and “Jurassic Fight Club,” because of his expertise. “I get to travel a lot,” he says. “Last year I went to England to talk about the bear specimens that I’ve researched, and before that, I went to Argentina to investigate a wide variety of fossil bears. The traveling is definitely one of the best parts of the job.” As much as he likes the exploration and teaching part, he also has responsibility for getting external funding and supervising a university department. While Schubert loves digs and traveling, he also is content writing articles. “I really do love what I do,” he says. “Teaching students is one of the most fulfilling parts.” The challenges of being a paleontologist are balanced by the rewards. With his colleague Steven Wallace, Schubert recently received a $320,000 grant to excavate and study fossils at the Gray Fossil Site, a massive fossil site in the Appalachians of eastern Tennessee. “This site is one of the most remarkable fossil collections in the world,” he says. “It represents one of the only Miocene and early Pliocene forested ecosystems in the Americas and preserves a multitude of species and biological communities new to science. It’s a massive site with less than one percent sampled.” Schubert says his job comes close to being perfect. “I just want to keep doing what I am doing,” he says. “This is what I love to do.” He adds that Central Missouri helped him on his way to his career and passion. “The university was great, my teachers were great, and they helped me pick this as something that I would love to do.” reaD it. rate it. Did you enjoy this story? Give us your feedback at ucmo.edu/today University of Central Missouri | today 19
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Spring - University of Central Missouri

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