What is a Cave Bear?
The cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) is a bear that survived the northern Pleistocene Eurasian continent and became extinct about 20,000 years ago during the Ice Age. Because its fossils were mostly found in caves, it was named "cave bear". In many famous caves, almost the entire skeleton fossils of cave bears were found. In addition, cave bear fossils have been found in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, China. They are the two giant bears of the Pleistocene with the giant short-faced bears.
- In addition, black bears and
- Cave bear
- Fossil evidence from various periods indicates that over the entire 300,000 to 15,000 years
- · In the Middle Ages of Europe, it was thought that cave bear bones were the bones of dragons in legend, and they were collected to make medicine.
- · Because cave bear sculptures were found in some temples and altars, some scholars suspect that some prehistoric Europeans may worship cave bears. Jean M. Auel's novel Ella and the Cave Bears describes this worship.
- In a cave in Romania, 140 cave bears were found in 1983 alone.
- · In 2005, scientists in California successfully discovered and interpreted a 40,000 years ago
- Cave bears (13 photos)
- · An evaluation study in 2008 showed that the huge cave bears that once lived in Europe were the first mammals to become extinct, and their extinction took place 13,000 years earlier than previously expected.
- Gaudry, a French paleontologist, believed that cave bears were highly herbivorous, very different from the giant short-faced bears of the same family that lived in North America at the time.
- · On some stone buildings of the Stone Age, many burr skulls can be found.
- Scientists have evidence that some caves were once occupied by ancient humans and cave bears.
- · In the caves in the high mountains of Poland, because they were not affected by humans, the cave bears there evolved in a relatively closed environment. A special type of cave bear appeared and fully adapted to the alpine environment, namely Deninger The bear (Ursus deningeri), which appeared about 700,000 BC, lived in the Cromerian interglacial period.
- Cave bear extinction reasons
- French and Belgian researchers have analyzed the cave bear's teeth recently and found that the cave bear is a omnivorous animal, not a "vegan" as previously speculated. The cave bears lived in Europe and the Middle East from 300,000 to 15,000 years ago, and later became extinct due to climate change and human hunting. According to research, it has common ancestors with the existing brown bears, and they have many similarities in form and living habits. However, there has been controversy in the scientific community about the "recipes" of cave bears. Most paleontologists believe that cave bears are a herbivore.
- Researchers from the French National Research Center and their Belgian counterparts introduced in a new issue of the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences that in order to verify this conjecture and to investigate the cause of cave bear extinction, they selected 40 caves that had been in Belgium. The skull of a cave bear hibernating here has been analyzed for scratches and spots on his tooth enamel. Previously, scientists often used this method to determine the food composition of animals.
- The latest analysis by researchers found that cave bears are not vegetarian. Before hibernation, its food variety was diverse, including birds and mammals, invertebrates, seeds, and a variety of dried and fresh fruits. Like most omnivores, it will not go into hibernation until it has stored enough energy.
- Previously, people have always thought that the cave bear's Pleistocene climate suddenly cooled, making the plant resources that it depends on scarce, which led to the extinction of this animal, but after confirming that cave bears are omnivores, this This statement will be marked with a question mark.