MUDDY CREEK TWP — A 200-pound black bear was killed Friday night when it wandered onto Interstate 79 and into the path of a sport utility type vehicle, authorities said.

The vehicle was carrying several occupants, at least one of whom was reportedly injured in the accident about 10 p.m. A state police accident report was not immediately available.

Troopers were called and pulled the carcass off the southbound lanes of the highway, a little less than 2 miles south of the Portersville exit.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission also was notified.

“That bear had the possibility of becoming a really big one,” said Randy Pilarcik, a Butler County-based wildlife conservation officer for the game commission. “He had big front paws that he hadn’t grown into yet.”

Pilarcik estimated the bear, a boar, weighed between 200 and 225 pounds and was at least 2 years old.

The carcass later was disposed of in one of the deer kill pits kept on state game lands. But before the carcass was discarded, a tooth was extracted from it for study.

“Biologists can establish a bear’s age by cutting a cross-section of a tooth and counting the rings under a microscope,” Pilarcik said, “like the way a tree’s age can be determined by counting the rings on a cross-section of trunk.”

Wildlife biologists use the extracted teeth from black bears to help monitor Pennsylvania’s bear population and determine how best to manage it.

Arthur “Chip” Brunst, another wildlife conservation officer in Butler County, said the rise in bear-vehicle accidents in recent years is evidence of a burgeoning black bear population.

“These types of crashes aren’t uncommon anymore,” he said. “They happen every year now in Butler County.

Brunst said in May a car struck and killed an 85-pound cub on Route 8 near Boy Scout Camp Bucoco in Slippery Rock Township.