The enigmatic Atlas bear

In this fascinating column, wildlife enthusiast and illustrator Joseph Ortega sketches the history and origins of a still-mysterious bear: the Atlas bear of norther Africa. This subspecies of the brown bear began with an ancestry shrouded in controversy and ended with an equally uncertain fate. It held out in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco seems to have been driven extinct sometime in the 19th century, although a few authorities think it could have lingered into the 20th.