Cave Bear
Scientific Classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Genus: Ursus
Binomial Name: Ursus spelaeus
Described by Johann Christian Rosenmüller, 1794
Common Names: Cave Bears, Eurasian Cave Bears, and Urzhadhi (Neanderthal Language)
Current Park Population: (7; all adults; 4 male, 3 female)
Park Diet: Berries, apples, potatoes, carrots, pears, plums, pine cones, watermelons, pumpkins, nuts, roots, reeds, twigs, grass, honey, fish, raw pork chops, eggs, bear feed, and horse feed.
Natural Diet: Berries, pine cones, nuts, roots, reeds, twigs, grass, honey, fish, carcasses, and eggs.
Lifespan: Twenty-six years
Habitat: Seasonal snowy areas with large amounts of food during Spring and Summer, caves during the winter; will occasionally go into swamps and grasslands
Native Ecosystem: Europe and Asia, Middle to Late Pleistocene, 0.25–0.024 Million Years Ago.
Breeding Season: February to June
Gestation Period: Six months
Number of Young: One to four, rarely five or six
Danger Level: Six out of ten
Summary: The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word cave and the scientific name spelaeus are used because fossils of this species were mostly found in caves. This reflects the views of experts that cave bears may have spent more time in caves than brown bear, which uses caves only for hibernation. It is thought to have been largely herbivorous. Cave bears are adaptable animals, that can change in size, diet, metabolism, and behavior in whatever environment they happen to be in. They can adjust to whatever species of plant or animal food may be available to them. Like many of the large megafaunal herbivore species of the ecosystem, it was native to, the cave bear would eat snow instead of digging the snow away with its paw when looking for food. Just like many other creatures that shared this behavior in their native habitat, the cave bear would urinate frequently.
Taxonomy: Cave bear skeletons were first described in 1774 by Johann Friedrich Esper, in his book Newly Discovered Zoolites of Unknown Four-Footed Animals. While scientists at the time considered that the skeletons could belong to apes, canids, felids, or even dragons or unicorns, Esper postulated that they actually belonged to polar bears. Twenty years later, Johann Christian Rosenmüller, an anatomist at Leipzig University, gave the species its binomial name. The bones were so numerous that most researchers had little regard for them. During World War I, with the scarcity of phosphate dung, the earth from the caves where cave bear bones occurred was used as a source of phosphates. When the "dragon caves" in Austria's Styria region were exploited for this purpose, only the skulls and leg bones were kept.
Many caves in Central Europe have skeletons of cave bears inside, such as the Heinrichshöhle in Hemer and the Dechenhöhle in Iserlohn, Germany. A complete skeleton, five complete skulls, and 18 other bones were found inside Kletno Bear Cave, in 1966 in Poland. In Romania, in a cave called Bears' Cave, 140 cave bear skeletons were discovered in 1983.
Cave bear bones are found in several caves in the country of Georgia. In 2021, Akaki Tsereteli State University's students and a lecturer discovered two complete cave bear skulls, with molars, canines, humerus, three vertebrae, and other bones, in a previously unexplored cave.
Evolution: Both the cave bear and the brown bear are thought to be descended from the Plio-Pleistocene Etruscan bear (Ursus etruscus) that lived about 5.3 Mya to 100,000 years ago. The last common ancestor of cave bears and brown bears lived between 1.2–1.4 Mya. The immediate precursor of the cave bear was probably Ursus deningeri (Deninger's bear), a species restricted to Pleistocene Europe about 1.8 Mya to 100,000 years ago. The transition between Deninger's bear and the cave bear is given as the last interglacial, although the boundary between these forms is arbitrary, and intermediate or transitional taxa have been proposed, e.g. Ursus spelaeus deningeroides, while other authorities consider both taxa to be chronological variants of the same species.
Cave bears found anywhere will vary in age, thus facilitating investigations into evolutionary trends. The three anterior premolars were gradually reduced, then disappeared, possibly in response to a largely vegetarian diet. In a fourth of the skulls found in the Conturines, the third premolar is still present, while more derived specimens elsewhere lack it. The last remaining premolar became conjugated with the true molars, enlarging the crown and granting it more cusps and cutting borders. This phenomenon, called molarization, improved the mastication capacities of the molars, facilitating the processing of tough vegetation. This allowed the cave bear to gain more energy for hibernation while eating less than its ancestors.
In 2005, scientists recovered and sequenced the nuclear DNA of a cave bear that lived between 42,000 and 44,000 years ago. The procedure used genomic DNA extracted from one of the animal's teeth. By sequencing the DNA directly (rather than first replicating it with the polymerase chain reaction), the scientists recovered 21 cave bear genes from remains that did not yield significant amounts of DNA with traditional techniques. This study confirmed and built on results from a previous study using mitochondrial DNA extracted from cave bear remains ranging from 20,000 to 130,000 years old. Both show that the cave bear was more closely related to the brown bear and polar bear than it was to the American black bear, but had split from the brown bear lineage before the distinct eastern and western brown bear lineages diversified, and before the split of brown bears and polar bears. The divergence date estimate of cave bears and brown bears is about 1.2–1.4 Mya. However, a recent study showed that both species had some hybridization between them.
Description: The cave bear had a very broad, domed skull with a steep forehead; its stout body had long thighs, massive shins, and in-turning feet, making it similar in skeletal structure to the brown bear. Fur Color varies among adults, older individuals are more black and dark brown, and young adults are brown, lightish brown, grayish brown, and tannish brown. Cubs are mostly grayish brown with brown legs and underbelly and a pale chest collar.
Size: Cave bears were comparable in size to, or larger than, the largest modern-day bears, measuring up to 2 m (6.6 ft) in length. The average weight for males was 350 to 600 kg (770 to 1,320 lb), though some specimens weighed as much as 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), while females weighed 225 to 250 kg (495 to 550 lb). Of cave bear skeletons in museums, 90% are classified as male due to a misconception that the female skeletons were mere "dwarfs". Cave bears grew larger during glaciations and smaller during interglacials, probably to adjust the heat loss rate.
Skull and Dentition: The Cave Bear skull is very broad and dome-shaped with a sleep forehead; Cave bears of the last Ice Age lacked the usual two or three premolars present in other bears; to compensate, the last molar is very elongated, with supplementary cusps The humerus of the cave bear was similar in size to that of the polar bear, as were the femora of females. The femora of male cave bears, however, bore more similarities in size to those of Kodiak bears.
Behavior:
Dietary habits: Cave bear teeth were very large and showed greater wear than most modern bear species, suggesting a diet of tough materials. However, tubers and other gritty food, which cause distinctive tooth wear in modern brown bears, do not appear to have constituted a major part of cave bears' diets based on dental microwear analysis.
The morphological features of the cave bear chewing apparatus, including loss of premolars, have long been suggested to indicate their diets displayed a higher degree of herbivory than the Eurasian brown bear. Indeed, a solely vegetarian diet has been inferred based on tooth morphology. Results obtained on the stable isotopes of cave bear bones also point to a largely vegetarian diet in having low levels of nitrogen-15 and carbon-13, which are accumulated at a faster rate by carnivores as opposed to herbivores.
However, some evidence points toward the occasional inclusion of animal protein in cave bear diets. For example, toothmarks on cave bear remains in areas where cave bears are the only recorded potential carnivores suggest occasional cannibalistic scavenging,[25][26] possibly on individuals that died during hibernation, and dental microwear analysis indicates the cave bear may have fed on a greater quantity of bone than its contemporary, the smaller Eurasian brown bear. Additionally, cave bear remains from Peștera cu Oase in the southwestern tip of the Romanian part of the Carpathian Mountains had elevated levels of nitrogen-15 in their bones, indicative of omnivorous diets, although the values are within the range of those found for the strictly herbivorous mammoth.
Although the current prevailing opinion concludes that cave bears were largely herbivorous, and more so than any modern species of the genus Ursus, increasing evidence points to omnivorous diets, based both on regional variability of isotopic composition of bone remains indicative of dietary plasticity, and on a recent re-evaluation of craniodental morphology that places the cave bear squarely among omnivorous modern bear species concerning its skull and tooth shapes. Cave bears will willingly eat snow for water.
Mortality: Death during hibernation was a common end for cave bears, mainly befalling specimens that failed ecologically during the summer season through inexperience, sickness, or old age. Some cave bear bones show signs of numerous ailments, including spinal fusion, bone tumors, cavities, tooth resorption, necrosis (particularly in younger specimens), osteomyelitis, periostitis, rickets, and kidney stones. Male cave bear skeletons have been found with broken bacula, probably due to fighting during the breeding season. Cave bear longevity is unknown, though it has been estimated that they seldom exceed twenty years of age. Paleontologists doubt adult cave bears had any natural predators, save for pack-hunting wolves and cave hyenas, which would probably have attacked sick or infirm individuals. Cave hyenas are thought to be responsible for the disarticulation and destruction of some cave bear skeletons. Such large carcasses were an optimal food resource for the hyenas, especially at the end of the winter, when food was scarce. The presence of fully articulated adult cave lion skeletons, deep in cave bear dens, indicates the lions may have occasionally entered dens to prey on hibernating cave bears, with some dying in the attempt.
Range and Habitat: The cave bear's range stretched across Europe; from Spain and the British Isles in the west, Italy, parts of Germany, Poland, the Balkans, Romania, Georgia, and parts of Russia, including the Caucasus; and northern Iran. No traces of cave bears have been found in the northern British Isles, Scandinavia, or the Baltic countries, which were all covered in extensive glaciers at the time. The largest numbers of cave bear remains have been found in Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, northern Spain, southern France, and Romania, roughly corresponding with the Pyrenees, Alps, and Carpathians. The huge number of bones found in southern, central, and eastern Europe has led some scientists to think Europe may have once had herds of cave bears. Others, however, point out that, though some caves have thousands of bones, they were accumulated over 100,000 years or more, thus requiring only two deaths in a cave per year to account for the large numbers.
The cave bear inhabited low mountainous areas, especially in regions rich in limestone caves. They seem to have avoided open plains, preferring forested or forest-edged terrains.
Reproduction: During their five-month breeding season, cave bears would look for a single female cave bear before attempting to woo them into mating with them and prove they have strong genes by hunting either a healthy fast yet weak animal, like a reindeer or horse, or a sick but still extremely strong animal, like a woolly rhino or small mammoth. Most of the cave bears went after fast prey, due to them being significantly less dangerous. This behavior allowed male cave bears to have a higher survival rate than Coelodonta (Woolly Rhinoceros) males.
Interactions with Other Species: Cave Bears face compeitition with Cave Hyenas, Cave Lions, Cave Wolves, Cave Leopards, and Steppe Brown Bears. Cave Bears would ocassioanlly scavenge carcasses and use their brute strentgh and claws to drive off packs of Cave Wolves, clans of Spotted Hyenas, and prides of Lions off a kill. Based on fossil evidence, Cave Lions would enter caves to prey on Denning Bears, but most of the time the result ends with the Lion's death from a woken angry Cave Bear. Steppe Brown Bear and Cave Bear normally don't compete as they have a niche partioning with the Steppe Brown Bear being more Carnivourous compared to the Herbiviorus Cave Bear.
Cave Bear live around the forest areas of the Ice Age alongside Wisent, Eurasian Elk or Moose, and Megaloceros. Ocassaionlly wander into the Ice Age Mammoth Steppes to graze on grass alongside Woolly Rhinoceros, Saiga, Antelopes, Woolly Mammoths, Aurochs, Elasmotherium, Tarpan, Steppe Bison, and European Wild Donkeys. Cave Bears aren't normally hunters due to their robust musuclar stature and large size so they can't go after fast running prey. If given the chance they would prey on young wisents, Eurasian Elk, Megaloceros, Woolly Rhinoceros, Saiga, Antelopes, Reindeer, Woolly Mammoths, Aurochs, Elasmotherium, Tarpan, Steppe Bison, and European Wild Donkeys.
Adult Cave Bears would wrestle with Woolly Rhinoceros, Steppe Bison, Wisent, Eurasian Elk or Moose, Megaloceros, Woolly Mammoths, Aurochs, and Elasmotherium although they would avoid these large animals inclduing a Bull Mammoth in Musth.
Relationship with Humans: Cave Bears have faced competition and threatened by humans and Neaderthals who hunt them for food and compete for caves. The apemen are able to overpower and kill Cave Bears especially during Hibernation when Denning Bears are Vulnerable. Cave bears are territorial and as dangerous to approach as any other bear species. While these omnivores are willing to stay away from humans and Neanderthals, they won't tolerate humans and Neanderthals that get too close, attack them, or get in their way.
The cave bear has no natural predators, although Cave Lions and Neanderthal tribes would attack them in the most severe occasions. Young Neanderthal men would have to hunt them to complete the Hunter's Passage Ritual, a Neanderthal ritual that required all young men who were about to enter manhood and become a hunter to bring back the scalp of a Woolly Mammoth, the smaller horn of Coelodonta, the claws of a cave bear, the horns of an Aurochs, and the skin of a cave lion. Many young hunters described the hunting of the cave bear as the most delicate and indeed terrifying part of their journey, which would take them far and wide across their known territories.
Between the years 1917 and 1923, the Drachenloch cave in Switzerland was excavated by Emil Bächler. The excavation uncovered more than 30,000 cave bear skeletons. It also uncovered a stone chest or cist, consisting of a low wall built from limestone slabs near a cave wall with a number of bear skulls inside it. A cave bear skull was also found with a femur bone from another bear stuck inside it. Scholars speculated that it was proof of prehistoric human religious rites involving the cave bear, or that the Drachenloch cave bears were hunted as part of a hunting ritual, or that the skulls were kept as trophies. In Archaeology, Religion, Ritual (2004), archaeologist Timothy Insoll strongly questions whether the Drachenloch finds in the stone cist were the result of human interaction. Insoll states that the evidence for religious practices involving cave bears in this time period is "far from convincing". Insoll also states that comparisons with the religious practices involving bears that are known from historic times are invalid.
A similar phenomenon was encountered in Regourdou, southern France. A rectangular pit contained the remains of at least twenty bears, covered by a massive stone slab. The remains of a Neanderthal lay nearby in another stone pit, with various objects, including a bear humerus, a scraper, a core, and some flakes, which were interpreted as grave offerings.
An unusual discovery in a deep chamber of Basura Cave in Savona, Italy, is thought to be related to cave bear worship, because there is a vaguely zoomorphic stalagmite surrounded by clay pellets. It is thought to have been used by Neanderthals for a ceremony; bear bones scattered on the floor further suggests it was likely to have had some sort of ritual purpose.
Extinction: Cave bears were found in a variety of habitats all over Europe. The cave bear was a species that could make use of almost any habitat that was presented to it, even the pine forests that led to the decline of the large Eurasian herbivores of the Pleistocene. However, despite its adaptability to multiple environments, the cave bear unfortunately went extinct. The reason that these magnificent omnivores went extinct is because of climate change and early humans taking away important caves that the bears needed for hibernation during the Winter months.
Reassessment of fossils in 2019 indicate that the cave bear probably died out 24,000 years ago. A complex set of factors, rather than a single factor, are suggested to have led to the extinction.
Compared with other megafaunal species that also became extinct during the Last Glacial Maximum, the cave bear was believed to have had a more specialized diet of high-quality plants and a relatively restricted geographical range. This was suggested as an explanation as to why it died out so much earlier than the rest. Some experts have disputed this claim, as the cave bear had survived multiple climate changes prior to extinction. Additionally, mitochondrial DNA research indicated that the genetic decline of the cave bear began long before it became extinct, demonstrating habitat loss due to climate change was not responsible. Finally, high δ15N levels were found in cave bear bones from Romania, indicating wider dietary possibilities than previously believed.
Overhunting by humans has been largely dismissed because human populations at the time were too small to pose a serious threat to the cave bear's survival, though the two species may have competed for living space in caves. The Chauvet Cave contains around 300 "bear hollows" created by cave bear brown bears, cave bears are seldom represented in cave paintings, leading some experts to believe the cave bear may have been avoided by human hunters or their habitat preferences may not have overlapped. Paleontologist Björn Kurtén hypothesized cave bear populations were fragmented and under stress even before the advent of the glaciers. Populations living south of the Alps possibly survived significantly longer.
Some evidence indicates that the cave bear used only caves for hibernation and was not inclined to use other locations, such as thickets, for this purpose, in contrast to the more versatile brown bear. This specialized hibernation behavior would have caused a high winter mortality rate for cave bears that failed to find available caves. Therefore, as human populations slowly increased, the cave bear faced a shrinking pool of suitable caves, and slowly faded away to extinction, as both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans sought out caves as living quarters, depriving the cave bear of vital habitat. This hypothesis is being researched as of 2010. According to the research study, published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, radiocarbon dating of the fossil remains shows that the cave bear ceased to be abundant in Central Europe around 35,000 years ago.
In 2019 the results of a large scale study of 81 bone specimens (resulting in 59 new sequences), and 64 previously published complete mitochondrial genomes of cave bear mitochondrial DNA remains found in Switzerland, Poland, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Serbia, indicated that the cave bear population drastically declined starting around 40,000 years ago at the onset of the Aurignacian, coinciding with the arrival of anatomically modern humans. It was concluded that human hunting and/or competition played a major role in their decline and ultimate disappearance, and that climate change was not likely to have been the dominant factor. In a study of Spanish cave bear mtDNA, each cave used by cave bears was found to contain almost exclusively a unique lineage of closely related haplotypes, indicating a homing behaviour for birthing and hibernation. The conclusion of this study is cave bears could not easily colonize new sites when in competition with humans for these resources.
Frozen Remains: In 2020 a well preserved ice age cave bear was found on the Bolshoy Lyakhovsky Island. At about the same time on the nearby Siberian mainland of Yakutia, a small, well preserved cave bear cub emerged from another patch of melting permafrost. As a few frozen cave bear carcasses exist, Akio doesn't have any current plans to clone cave bears.
Reintroduction Project: Prehistoric Park would normally plan to one day reintroduce a Pleistocene Eurasian animal, but, unfortunately, the cave bear wasn't part of the Russian mammoth steppe ecosystem. This, therefore, has made it unreleasable in Pleistocene Park. Nexus has thought of making a smaller park in Western Russia, where it could be in a semi-wild environment.
In Popular Culture: The 1980 novel The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel, along with its sequels and film adaptation, presented a fictional view of the relationship between the bears, Cro-Magnon people, and Neanderthals.
Danger Tip: Cave bears are the proud owners of very powerful claws and teeth that can kill humans, Neanderthals, and small to medium animals attacking them with little effort. They must, however, be careful of breaking their claws, as they often take months to regrow. When cave bears do break their claws, they resort to their sharp teeth, which can be used to maul almost any kind of imaginable enemy in their natural habitat.
Significant Events: On the First day of the Team's Second Rescue Mission while exploring a cave. They wake an elderly Scarred Male Cave Bear who chased them up a tree, but collapse on his way back to the cave as he faced another attack earlier now confirmed by geneticists to be the ApeMen. Lana was able to comfort the Bear and was transported by the Vet Team to the park. The Team later used their air horns to wake up more Bears to run itno the portal, (Both Cave Bears and Steppe Brown Bears). They now reside in the Ice Age Mount Predator Paddocks.
Ice Age Mount Cave Bear Paddock: The third section of Ice Age Mount, which was naturally at the very back of the overall zone and closest to the zone's exit, consisted of six appropriately sized paddocks themed after ice age valleys and steppes that came with large rocky caves that served as indoor dens. It is home to Cave Bears, Cave Leopards, Cave Hyenas, Cave Lions, Cave Wolves, and Steppe Brown Bears.
The Cave Bear Paddock is mostly woodland forest and steppes with a flowing river ending with a lake. There are large Caves where the Bears can sleep and den for the winter. Visitors can see them through the screens from the Security Video Cameras alongside Glass Viewing Panels. The Cave Bear Sleuth of Prehistoric Park are willing to share their territory with other cave bears because of the plentiful food provided by the keepers and them no longer having to hold their own territories, thus allowing for multiple cave bears to live peacefully within close proximity to each other.
Like most animals at Prehistoric Park, the Cave Bears eventually learn to recognize their keepers but still aren't friendly towards them. They are, however, more tolerant of their keepers than other humans and Neanderthals. This was the case with Lana Loud's bond with the older male Baloo.
"Lana Loud drew an illustration of her riding on the back of Baloo who is laying down on the grass floor."
Notable Individuals:
Baloo: A solitary adult male cave bear easily recognized by his myriad scars, the fact that he's visibly blinded in one eye, and has a crippled hindleg. Named after the Bear from the Jungle Book. Forms a primary bond with Lana Loud and a secondary bond with her twin sister Lola Loud.
Rebecca: An adult female cave bear, amongst an entire sleuth rescued and eventual mate to Baloo.
Toklo: A younger adult male cave bear named after a character from Seekers, amongst an entire sleuth rescued.
Aiyanna: A young adult female cave bear named after a character from Seekers, amongst an entire sleuth rescued and eventual mate to Toklo.
Conclusion: All and all, the Cave Bear is a species that can be enjoyed from afar, if one makes sure not to aggravate it in any way. With a fierce appearance, yet furry and cuddly exterior, these beasts of the Ice Age are sure to be enjoyed by the public for a long time.
The Field Guide might take a long time, like structuring and writing descriptions of the creatures, but also my time in college and spending time with my family. So you can suggest additional information quotes, descriptions, and natural or speculative behaviors for the prehistoric animals that I can edit and you send your suggestions either in reviews or Private Messages.
Examples: Inferring what the toons are doodling on the sketches or snarking quotes.
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