Crossword-Solution: URSID 5 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 6

Nordmann took from a cave near Odessa 4,500 bones of ursidæ, associated with no less numerous relics of the large cave-lion and cave-hyena.17 The Külock Cave, now some six hundred and fifty feet above the river, contained the remains of no less than 2,500 bears, and similar relics occur by thousands in the osseous breccia of Santenay and in the cave of Lherm, where they form a regular ossuary.

Filhol describes no fewer than seventeen varieties of the genus _Cynodictis_, which fill up all the interval between the viverine animals and the bear-like dog _Amphicyon_; nor do I know any solid ground of objection to the supposition that, in this _Cynodictis-Amphicyon_ group, we have the stock whence all the Viveridæ, Felidæ, Hyænidæ, Canidæ, and perhaps the Procyonidæ and Ursidæ, of the present fauna have been evolved.

The Ursidæ are represented by only one species of an extinct genus, _Leptarchus_, from the Pliocene of Nebraska.

The skull resembled in form that of a bear; the molar teeth were of Ungulate type, and the incisors like those of a Rodent; but the skeleton was more that of the Ursidæ, the feet being plantigrade.

Other extinct genera are, _Cynodictis_, _Cyotherium_, and _Galethylax_, from the Eocene of France; _Pseudocyon_, _Simocyon_, and _Hemicyon_, from the Miocene; but all these show transition characters to Viverridæ or Ursidæ, and do not perhaps belong to the present family.