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In the late 1980s Tom Miller and other cavers were mapping a portion of the Chiquibul Cave System known as the Mind Proddler in Cebada Cave when they found an abundance of bat skeletons, including an extinct type of vampire bat. The same chamber also contained a complete skeleton of a bear. This specimen was highlighted in a National Geographic article in April of 2000, and was identified as the extinct Florida cave bear, Tremarctos floridanus.
In April of 2025, our team revisited this section of the cave to assess paleontological resources, particularly the bear. Dental measurements resemble the living spectacled bear of South America (Tremarctos ornatus) more than the extinct T. floridanus, and it may be the former. If this is the case, the specimen represents the first record of the spectacled bear outside South America. It is also possible that the bear represents a new morphotype, a transitional form between the extinct (T. floridanus) and living (T. ornatus) forms, or even a new species.
Photographs and scans of the bear skeleton provide an important record of this unique and fragile fossil specimen. These records preserve the current condition of the material and can be used for research, teaching, outreach, and conservation purposes. After assessing this section of Cebada Cave, it is clearly an extraordinary fossil locality that deserves more research and a high level of protection.
Blaine W. Schubert and Alson Ovando