Extinct California grizzly bears weren't the giant, blood-thirsty "hypercarnivores" humans made them out to be, new research has found.
It turns out that the once-abundant grizzly bears were mostly vegetarian and only occasionally indulged in livestock after European colonizers and American settlers began farming in California. Contrary to popular belief at the time, these grizzlies also didn't grow to monstrous proportions and rarely, if ever, tipped the scales at the oft-cited number of 2,000 pounds (900 kilograms).
