Ursavini

Ursavini is an extinct tribe of mammals of the family Ursidae (bears) endemic to North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia during the Miocene through the Pliocene, living from about 23—2.5 Mya, existing for roughly 20.5 million years.

Ursavini Temporal range: 23–2.5 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Life restoration of Ballusia orientalis
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Carnivora
Family:	Ursidae
Subfamily:	†Ursavinae Hendey, 1980
Tribe:	†Ursavini Hendey, 1980
Genera
†Ballusia †Ursavus

Ursavini was assigned to the Ursinae by Hunt (1998) and Jin et al. (2007) and includes the genera Agriotherium and Ursavus.^[1][2] However in a 2014 paper published on the origins of bears, found Agriotherium to be closer to extant bears and some species of Ursavus might warrant to be in a separate but related genus Ballusia.^[3]

References

1. Hunt, R. M. (1998). "Ursidae". In Jacobs, Louis; Janis, Christine M.; Scott, Kathleen L. (eds.). Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America: Volume 1, Terrestrial Carnivores, Ungulates, and Ungulate like Mammals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 174–195. ISBN 0-521-35519-2.
2. C. Jin, R. L. Ciochon, W. Dong, R. M. Hunt, Jr., J. Liu, M. Jaeger, and Q. Zhu. 2007. The first skull of the earliest giant panda. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104:10932-10937
3. Qiu, Zhan-Xiang; et al. (2014). "A Late Miocene Ursavus skull from Guanghe, Gansu, China". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 52 (3): 265–302.