The Atlas bear was once Africa's only native bear and has a weird path to extinction. Unlike many extinctions that were caused by the expansion of the British Empire, the Atlas bear's numbers were greatly decreased by another global power, the Roman Empire. When the Romans rocked up in North Africa they started using the Atlas bear as a form of execution. They would capture them, starve them and beat them to increase their desperation when they were finally released in into the arena to face-off against criminals (and subsequently rip the face off of criminals). This was known as Damnatio ad bestias (Latin for "damnation by beast"). This didn't quite finish them off, but, true to form, humans hunted them for sport, despite them being gentle herbivores, and the last ones were killed in 1870.
