Bears one of the largest land predators alive right now, but today's bears are tiny compared to a massive prehistoric bear ...

Indeed, the biggest bear recorded in modern times was an incredible ... The end of the Pleistocene was marked not only by the thawing of the Earth but by the extinction of numerous megafauna.

The top 10 largest bear species, ranked by size and weight, range from the polar bear, standing up to 10 feet tall and weighing over 1,500 pounds, to the sloth bear of the Indian subcontinent.