Cave Bear Evolution

[brobear]

The cave bear and the grizzly separated from the same family of bears roughly 1.6 million years ago - which leaves them still very closely related historically.
 
                                             

[brobear]

Sub-species of cave bears include:
Ursus spelaeus ingressus
Ursus spelaeus kudarensis
Ursus spelaeus ladinicus
Ursus spelaeus spelaeus
.........The cave bear lineage is formed by two species, U. deningeri VON REICHENAU 1906 and U. spelaeus ROSENMÜLLER 1794, anteceded by a more primitive form, usually named Ursus savini ANDREWS 1922 (Kurtén, 1968), that sometimes is considered as a variety or subspecies of U. deningeri (Kurtén, 1969a; Bishop, 1982; Mazza & Rustioni, 1994). These three species are chronospecies. Unlike biological species, chronospecies are arbitrary divisions of a single evolutionary lineage, defined on the basis of morphological change. According to Simpson (1961) the morphologic differences between species should be at least as large as those between living species of the same taxonomic group.
shaggygod.proboards.com/

[brobear]

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/06/0606_050606_alpsbears_2.html

Ancient Bear DNA Mapped -- A 1st for Extinct Species

The researchers sequenced all of the genomic DNA they could get out of the cave bear bones. Without amplifying any of it, they then identified each sequence by comparing it to the complete dog-genome sequence that is publicly available. Dogs and bears, which diverged some 50 million years ago, are 92 percent similar on the sequence level.

"[It was] sort of like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Eddy Rubin, the director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, where the work was done. "Fortunately the computer was a great magnet for finding the needles we were interested in."

About 6 percent of the sample that was sequenced yielded undamaged cave bear DNA, while the rest was a hodgepodge of microbial contaminants. Within those fractions of cave bear DNA were bits of genes.

Comparing the ancient bear sequences with those of modern bears, the scientists showed that cave bears were more closely related to brown bears than to black bears.

"It shows that we got enough ancient genomic DNA to learn something biologically relevant about the cave bear," Noonan said.

Human Evolution

The cave bear DNA sequencing opens the door to the testing of other extinct species, including our nearest prehistoric relatives, the Neandertals. The scientists say they plan to sequence the Neandertal genome over the next several years.

Another possibility is to apply these techniques to the remains of Homo floresiensis, found recently in Indonesia. Researchers nicknamed this human ancestor "the hobbit" because of its tiny stature.

H. floresiensis is believed to have diverged from modern humans two million years ago. Neandertals may have diverged from humans 500,000 years ago.

The successful DNA sequencing of the two human-ancestor species could help scientists describe the evolutionary events that led to modern humans.

What about sequencing the DNA from dinosaur fossils?

"Unfortunately, we don't think [that] will ever be possible," Noonan said. "DNA does not survive beyond a hundred thousand years under the environmental conditions in which we found our cave bear remains. And of course, dinosaur fossils are at least 65 million years old."

[brobear]

agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US201500210112

Niche partitioning between two sympatric genetically distinct cave bears (Ursus spelaeus and Ursus ingressus) and brown bear (Ursus arctos) from Austria: Isotopic evidence from fossil bones [2011]
Bocherens, Hervé Stiller, Mathias Hobson, Keith A. Pacher, Martina Rabeder, Gernot Burns, James A. Tütken, Thomas Hofreiter, Michael

In the Austrian caves of Gamssulzen and Ramesch, two genetically distinct cave bears, Ursus ingressus and Ursus spelaeus eremus, apparently lived side by side for 15,000 years, together with brown bears Ursus arctos. The possible ecological partitioning of these three types of bears was investigated using multi-isotopic tracking of organic (δ¹³Ccₒₗₗ, δ¹⁵Ncₒₗₗ) and inorganic (δ¹³Ccₐᵣb, δ¹⁸Ocₐᵣb, δ¹⁸OPO₄) fractions of bone. The cave bears from Ramesch, Ursus spelaeus eremus, were ecologically distinct from the cave bears from Gamssulzen, Ursus ingressus, both being ecologically distinct from brown bears from Ramesch, Ursus arctos. Both cave bear types were purely herbivorous but likely consumed different plant types and/or plants from different habitats, while brown bears included some animal proteins in their diet. Bone apatite δ¹⁸O values strongly suggest that both types of cave bears used isotopically distinct water sources, indicating that they may not have occupied the same landscape, either separated in space or in time due to climatic shifts. Therefore, the influence of environmental conditions strongly constrained the genetic structure of these bears.

[brobear]

From my friend and highly respected poster GrizzlyClaws: Ursus deningeri was likely the predecessor for both Ursus spelaeus and Ursus ingressus.

BTW, the first member of the Brown bear clade was Ursus etruscus; its European branch gave the birth of Ursus deningeri, while its Asian branch gave the birth of Ursus arctos.

[brobear]

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098220100046X

The cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, represents one of the most frequently found paleontological remains from the Pleistocene in Europe. The species has always been confined to Europe and was contemporary with the brown bear, Ursus arctos. Relationships between the cave bear and the two lineages of brown bears defined in Europe, as well as the origins of the two species, remain controversial, mainly due to the wide morphological diversity of the fossil remains, which makes interpretation difficult 1 and 2. Sequence analysis of ancient DNA is a useful tool for resolving such problems because it provides an independent source of data. We previously amplified a short DNA fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region (mt control region) of a 40,000-year-old Ursus spelaeus sample. In this paper, we describe the DNA analysis of two mtDNA regions, the control region and the cytochrome b gene. Control region sequences were obtained from ten samples of cave bears ranging from 130,000 to 20,000 years BP, and one particularly well-conserved sample gave a complete cyt b sequence. Our data demonstrate that cave bears split largely before the lineages of brown bears around 1.2 million years ago. Given its abundance, its wide distribution in space and time, and its large morphological diversity, the cave bear is a promising model for direct observation of the evolution of sequences throughout time, extinction periods, and the differentiation of populations shaped by climatic fluctuations during the Pleistocene.

In order to confirm these results, we analyzed another mt DNA gene, cyt b, for which many bear sequences are known. In particular, various lineages of brown bears from North America were recently described by the use of this marker 10, 11 and 12. We obtained sequences from the complete cyt b gene in one cave bear sample, TAB 15, which always produced very good PCR amplifications. Because it is impossible to obtain a 1140 bp fragment by using ancient DNA templates, we successively amplified seven short, overlapping PCR fragments of the cyt b gene. We sequenced all of these fragments and compiled their sequences to generate the full-length sequence. The cyt b gene from U. spelaeus exhibits 93.5% identity with the cyt b gene from U. arctos, 90.2% with U. americanus, and 85.5%–91.4% with other bears. Interestingly, the cave bear sequence exhibits the same strong bias on nucleotide composition as do the brown bears. This argues in favor of the authenticity and reliability of the ancient cave bear cyt b sequence.

In a phylogenetic tree, the TAB15 sample clusters with the U. arctos and U. maritimus sequences, although its relation to these sequences is distant (Figure 3). The cave bear joins brown and polar bears with 97% support on distance analysis and 69% on parsimony analysis (Figure 3 and data not shown). The cyt b gene does not resolve the relationships between the other species with high support. Taken together, these results support the notion that the cave bear was an early offshoot of the brown bear lineage and originated long before the split between the two lineages of brown bears.

[brobear]

By Polar: In summary, the Cave Bear is a great (close) relative of the Brown Bear than the Black/Etruscan Bear lineage. I once thought that Cave Bears were equally related to both the former and latter, but this seems true moreso in the former.

Make sense as Cave Bears possess many similar physiological traits (shoulder hump, more robust chest and shorter arms for body size) and dietary traits (large range from carnivorous to herbivorous) just like Brown Bears, at least like North American Brown Bears. The Siberian/Kamchatkan Grizzlies seem to be much more carnivorous due to a greater lack of edible (nutrient-rich) vegetation in the SIberian steppes and ranges than in the North American biomes, where vegetation is plenty.

[brobear]

The Etruscan bear Ursus etruscus evolved from the Ursus minimus and existed from 5.3 million to 11,000 years ago, before becoming extinct near the end of the last glacial period. The 3 subspecies are Ursus etruscus etruscus, Ursus etruscus ruscinensis, and Ursus etruscus arvernensis. It is the ancestor of Ursus spelaeus, Ursus deningeri, Ursus savini and Ursus arctos.

... Black bears also evolved from Ursus minimus.

[brobear]

1 - Ursus deningeri - a giant ancestral cave bear.
2 - Ursus kudarensis - Asiatic cave bear.
3 - Ursus eremus - a smaller cave bear.
4 - Ursus ladinicus - a smaller cave bear.
5 - Ursus spelaeus ingressus - the giant omnivorous cave bear.
6 - Ursus spelaeus spelaeus - the giant vegan cave bear.
7 - Ursus spelaeus sensu lato - ?

[brobear]

shaggygod.proboards.com/

First posted by Grraahh... The cave bear lineage is formed by two species, U. deningeri VON REICHENAU 1906 and U. spelaeus ROSENMÜLLER 1794, anteceded by a more primitive form, usually named Ursus savini ANDREWS 1922 (Kurtén, 1968), that sometimes is considered as a variety or subspecies of U. deningeri (Kurtén, 1969a; Bishop, 1982; Mazza & Rustioni, 1994). These three species are chronospecies. Unlike biological species, chronospecies are arbitrary divisions of a single evolutionary lineage, defined on the basis of morphological change. According to Simpson (1961) the morphologic differences between species should be at least as large as those between living species of the same taxonomic group.

[brobear]

By Grrraaahhh - shaggygod.proboards.com/

I had asked this question: How closely related were the cave bears to brown bears?

Answer: The brown bear originates in Asia then moves to Europe sometime during the late Pleistocene replacing the Etruscan bears and gave rise as a side branch, to the cave bear line. There are other brown bear migrations to Asia, North Africa, and eventually North America. The brown bear is robust and adaptable. The brown bear historical range overlaps with other animals including the European cave lion, Asiatic, European & North African lions; tigers stretching from central to east Asia, polar bears of the arctic circle, black bears, cave bears, and there is some evidence that a small number of brown bears successfully penetrated North America (IIRC, settling along the southern Canada/northern US border) during the time of the Giant Short Faced Bear. Some of the overlapping were brief time while other continue through today. The point being (I did digress from the original question) is that the brown bear is quite durable.

[brobear]

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC45432/

Tracking the origins of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) by mitochondrial DNA sequencing.
C Hänni, V Laudet, D Stehelin, and P Taberlet

The different European populations of Ursus arctos, the brown bear, were recently studied for mitochondrial DNA polymorphism. Two clearly distinct lineages (eastern and western) were found, which may have diverged approximately 850,000 years ago. In this context, it was interesting to study the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, a species which became extinct 20,000 years ago. In this study, we have amplified and sequenced a fragment of 139-bp in the mitochondrial DNA control region of a 40,000-year-old specimen of U. spelaeus. Phylogenetic reconstructions using this sequence and the European brown bear sequences already published suggest that U. spelaeus diverged from an early offshoot of U. arctos--i.e., approximately at the same time as the divergence of the two main lineages of U. arctos. This divergence probably took place at the earliest glaciation, likely due to geographic separation during the earlier Quaternary cold periods. This result is in agreement with the paleontological data available and suggests a good correspondence between molecular and morphological data.

[brobear]

www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Cave_bear

The cave bear is thought to be descended from the plio-pleistocene Etruscan bear (Ursus etruscus) through the Deninger's bear (Ursus deningeri) of the Pleistocene half a million years ago.

Cave bears found in different regions vary in age and evolutionary advancement, thus facilitating investigations into their development. The three anterior premolars were gradually reduced, then disappeared. In a fourth of the skulls found in the Conturines, the third premolar is still present, while the other more evolved specimens elsewhere lack it. The fourth premolar developed into a molar. The last remaining premolar became conjugated with the true molars, enlarging the crown and granting it more cusps and cutting borders. This phenomenon known as 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 (Altabadia).

Molecular phylogenetic analysis of mtDNA suggests that cave bears and brown bears separated from a common ancestor about 1.2 to 1.6 million years ago (Orlando et al. 2002).

Experts generally agree on the time of the extinction of the cave bear—about 12,000 years ago at the end of the late glacial period (Orlando et al. 2002)—but they remain in dispute about the causes of the extinction. Some have proposed that the bears' large size and lack of natural predators caused them to degenerate as a species, while others claim that habitat loss due to climate change was responsible for the extinction. Yet another group of experts disputes this claim, as the cave bears had earlier survived multiple episodes of climate change. In their key article on ancient DNA and the population genetics of the cave bear, Orlando et al. (2002) note that climatic changes may have altered the bears' genetic diversity profiles in ways that pushed the bears to their extinction. They note that the cave bear started to become extinct during cold climatic conditions accompanied by an observed simultaneous and significant loss of genetic diversity.

Overhunting by humans has been largely dismissed due to the fact that human populations at the time were too small to pose a serious threat to the cave bears' survival, though there is proof that the two species may have competed for living space in caves. One theory proposed by late paleontologist Bjorn Kurten states that the cave bear populations were fragmented and under stress even before the advent of the glaciers (Bieder 2005).

[brobear]

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618213007921

Behavioural ecology of Late Pleistocene bears (Ursus spelaeus, Ursus ingressus): Insight from stable isotopes (C, N, O) and tooth microwear.

Abstract
Several types of bears lived in Europe during the Late Pleistocene. Some of them, such as cave bears (Ursus s. spelaeus and Ursus ingressus), did not survive after about 25,000 years ago, while others are still extant, such as brown bear (Ursus arctos). Our article aims at a better understanding of the palaeoecology of these large “carnivores” and focuses on two regions, the Ach valley in the Swabian Jura (SW-Germany) with Geißenklösterle and Hohle Fels, and the Totes Gebirge (Austria) with Ramesch and Gamssulzen caves. Both regions revealed two genetically distinct cave bear lineages, and previous studies suggest behavioural differences for the respective bears in these two regions.

In the Ach valley, irrespective of the cave site, U. s. spelaeus was replaced by U. ingressus around 28 ka uncal BP with limited chronological overlap without recognizable dietary changes as documented by the isotopic composition (13C, 15N) of the bones. Furthermore, the present study shows that the dental microwear pattern was similar for all bears in both caves, however with a larger variability in Geißenklösterle than in Hohle Fels.

In contrast, the two Austrian caves, Gamssulzen (U. ingressus) and Ramesch (Ursus s. eremus), show considerable differences in both palaeodietary indicators, i.e., stable isotopes, and dental microwear, over at least 15,000 years. The oxygen and carbon analysis of the tooth enamel combined with the dental microwear of the same molars provide an extremely diversified picture of the feeding behaviour of these fossil bears. The already known differences between these two study areas are confirmed and refined using the new approaches. Moreover, the differences between the two cave bear lineages in the Totes Gebirge became even larger. Some niche partitioning between both types of cave bears was supported by the present study but it does not seem to be triggered by climate. This multi-disciplinary approach gives new insights into the palaeobiology of extinct bears.

[brobear]

johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/genomics/non-primate/cave-bear-atapuerca-2013.html

Cave bear DNA from Sima de los Huesos
10 Sep 2013
Jesse Dabney and colleagues, including Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, report on the assembly of a complete mitochondrial genome from a 300,000-year-old cave bear, from Sima de los Huesos, Atapuerca, Spain. This is the oldest DNA recovered outside of permafrost contexts, and as the conclusion of the paper points out, this is a demonstration of the potential for ancient DNA techniques in Middle Pleistocene specimens. The DOI for the paper is not yet working but the abstract is available online from PNAS.

Of course, the most newsworthy aspect of the study is what it promises for sequencing the hominin remains from Sima de los Huesos in the near future. This is one of the densest accumulations of hominin bone anywhere in the world, through the entire record of our evolution, and so has lots and lots of specimens that might yield genetic evidence if the technology can cope. Dabney and colleagues show a new ability to recover and examine the short fragments of DNA that survive after hundreds of thousands of years:

We note that, although the vast majority of cave bear sequences are only 3050 bp in length, we have not yet systematically explored the lower size limit of DNA fragments surviving in ancient bone. It is therefore possible that even shorter molecules can be made available for sequencing in the future, by using library-based techniques as described here or directly via single-molecule sequencing (8, 25). However, in addition to further optimizations of the DNA extraction method, such attempts will have to include improvements to hybridization enrichment of very short molecules and the development of new sequence analysis strategies that allow for confidently aligning very short sequences to a reference genome while discriminating endoge- nous sequences from contaminating environmental DNA. We hope that the methodology presented here will help to retrieve ancient DNA sequences from additional organisms of the Middle Pleistocene period. The fossil remains from Sima de los Huesos will undoubtedly remain in the focus of such efforts, because they include the largest assembly of Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils in the world (42).

The breakthrough here is in using library preparation methods that reduce the bias against shorter sequence fragments, and computationally filtering those sequence fragments in ways that enhance their assembly against a reference genome.

Strikingly, despite a bias toward hybridizing longer molecules (Fig. S1), 94% of the sequences are no longer than 50 bp and 76% are no longer than 40 bp, respectively (Fig. 2A). The vast majority of sequenced DNA fragments are thus in a size range that was not efficiently recovered with previous methods.

This seems very promising. As Dabney and coworkers show, it is enough to assemble a mitochondrial genome. It will be more challenging to get nuclear DNA evidence in this manner, because the coverage will be much lower for a given amount of material, but several different approaches can yield useful hypothesis tests from such fragments interspersed across the genome. What they won’t do is allow PCR probing for particular loci, because short fragments don’t leave room for primers.

So what can we learn from a 300,000-year-old cave bear mtDNA genome? The paper gives a great short mini-review of how ancient DNA has changed our knowledge of cave bear phylogeography:

The earliest fossil evidence of cave bear-derived morphological features is found ?1.2 Ma in Ursus dolinensis, a species that was defined in Atapuerca Gran Dolina (TD4) (27) but is also recorded at Atapuerca Trinchera Elefante (TE9) (28) and Untermassfeld (29, 30). An abundant fossil record in Europe and parts of Asia indicates that subsequent cave bear evolution proceeded through the Middle Pleistocene form U. deningeri, which transitioned into the Late Pleistocene form Ursus spelaeus sensu lato (31), before cave bears went extinct 28 ka (32). Genetic and morphological analyses support a further differentiation of three types of Late Pleistocene cave bears. The first two, U. spelaeus sensu stricto and Ursus ingressus, are predominantly found in Europe and are thought to have become reproductively isolated (33). The third type has been found only in the Caucasus and the Yana river region in Eastern Siberia and was designated U. deningeri kudarensis (34) based on its more ancestral dental morphology. It also shows a divergent mitochondrial haplotype (35, 36).

This is not exactly like the shifts in Neandertal phylogeography that have emerged from mtDNA sequences in the last few years, but nonetheless the cave bear story is comparable in many ways. Maybe most interesting is that cave bears from the easternmost part of their Late Pleistocene range in the Caucasus form an mtDNA clade separate from the more western cave bears, which additionally retains a more ancestral dental configuration. Cave bear Denisovans? The mtDNA phylogeny is very much like the hominin one, which has the Denisova mtDNA sequence as a relatively distant outgroup to both living people and all known Neandertals.

The new sequence from Sima de los Huesos is not an outgroup, despite being the most ancient specimen, and despite its plesiomorphic anatomy. That renders the “ancestral” cave bear species, Ursus deningeri, as a paraphyletic taxon, at least for mtDNA sequences.

Of course, in the hominin case the nuclear DNA does not show the same picture as the mtDNA relationships, so it is hard to predict what the future of cave bear ancient DNA may hold. The current samples are recognized as several distinct species, and it will be interesting to see whether DNA supports that interpretation, or whether instead we see a hominin-like mixture of different populations across Europe during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Personally, I can’t wait until we have a thicker sampling of the Middle Paleolithic time slice for a number of species, because that will enable us to understand the population dynamics in response to at least two and possibly more glacial cycles in Europe.

[brobear]

Quote from above post: ...three types of Late Pleistocene cave bears. The first two, U. spelaeus sensu stricto and Ursus ingressus, are predominantly found in Europe and are thought to have become reproductively isolated (33). The third type has been found only in the Caucasus and the Yana river region in Eastern Siberia and was designated U. deningeri kudarensis (34) based on its more ancestral dental morphology. It also shows a divergent mitochondrial haplotype (35, 36).

[King Kodiak]

True causes for extinction of cave bear revealed: More human expansion than climate change
Date:
August 25, 2010
Source:
Plataforma SINC
Summary:
The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analyzed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new fossil samples, and compared these with the modern brown bear. The results show that the decline of the cave bear started 50,000 years ago, and was caused more by human expansion than by climate change.
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FULL STORY

Ursus spelaeus male skull found in Cova Eiros (Triacastela, Lugo).
Credit: Grandal-D'Anglade et al.
The cave bear started to become extinct in Europe 24,000 years ago, but until now the cause was unknown. An international team of scientists has analysed mitochondrial DNA sequences from 17 new fossil samples, and compared these with the modern brown bear. The results show that the decline of the cave bear started 50,000 years ago, and was caused more by human expansion than by climate change.

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"The decline in the genetic diversity of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) began around 50,000 years ago, much earlier than previously suggested, at a time when no major climate change was taking place, but which does coincide with the start of human expansion," says Aurora Grandal-D'Anglade, co-author of the study and a researcher at the University Institute of Geology of the University of Coruña.

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.

"This can be attributed to increasing human expansion and the resulting competition between humans and bears for land and shelter," explains the scientist, who links this with the scarce fossil representation of the bear's prey in the abundant fossil record of this species.

In order to reach their conclusions, the team of scientists, led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), studied mitochondrial DNA sequences from bear fossils in European deposits (Siberia, Ukraine, Central Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, specifically Galicia), and carried out a Bayesian analysis (of statistical probability).

The scientists also made comparisons with the modern brown bear (Ursus arctos) and with fossil samples of this species of bear, and managed to show why one became extinct and the other did not. In order to demonstrate this, the study analysed 59 cave bear DNA sequences and 40 from the brown bear, from between 60,000 and 24,000 years ago for the cave bear and from 80,000 years ago up to the present day for the brown bear.

Decline of the caves, extinction of the bears

The impoverishment of ecosystems during the last glacial maximum was "the 'coup de grace' for this species, which was already in rapid decline," the author explains.

The present day brown bear did not suffer the same fate and has survived until today for one simple reason -- brown bears did not depend so heavily on the cave habitat, which was becoming degraded, and this is why they did not follow the same pattern as the cave bears.

"Brown bears rely on less specific shelters for hibernation. In fact, their fossil remains are not very numerous in cave deposits," the Galician researcher says.

The definitive extinction of the cave bear "broadly" coincides with the last cooling of the climate during the Pleistocene (between 25,000 and 18,000 years ago), which may have led to a reduction in shelter and the vegetation that the animals fed on.

The cave bear inhabited Europe during the Late Pleistocene and became definitively extinct around 24,000 years ago, although it held out for a few thousand years longer in some areas, such as the north west of the Iberian Peninsula, than in other places. This ursid was a large animal, weighing 500 kg on average, and was largely a herbivore. The bear hibernated in the depths of limestone caves, where the remains of individuals that died during hibernation slowly accumulated over time.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100824082230.htm

[brobear]

the-educational-blog.quora.com/Clarifying-the-various-cave-bear-species

Clarifying the various cave bear species by Hamza Shaikh.

When it comes to the Pleistocene of the old world, one of the animals whose names have become popular to the public eye, aside from the woolly mammoth and rhinoceros, is the great cave bear.

Notably featured in the title of Jean M. Auel’s debut best-seller, The Clan of the Cave Bear, which, along with its sequels and film adaptation, gave the cave bear a strong importance to the Clan (Neanderthals) and cameo appearances elsewhere, other prehistoric fiction-themed media, such as the (fairly) recent Far Cry Primal and Skyrim have continued to showcase the cave bear, as well as few documentaries.

As with most prehistoric creatures in pop culture, they are typically shown as being wild, ravenous and savage bruins ubiquitous to a primeval world. Make no mistake - while any bear, especially one that grows to 400+kg, is a formidably well-armed and potentially very dangerous animal to humans, the evidence strongly suggests that cave bears were almost purely herbivorous.

Most people who have read factual information on these old bruins will have probably heard that they lived mainly in Europe, and went by the Latin name Ursus spelaeus, after the caves which bore their remains during their winter sleep.

Granted, while U. spelaeus is considered to be a valid species, which did live in Europe, the scientific community now recognizes the term “cave bear” to encompass several closely related, now-extinct species, that were found as far as northeastern Siberia, and has done so since the beginning of the 20th century. In recent decades, the number of recognized species has now increased thanks to advances in ancient DNA (aDNA) research.

It is these cave bear species which I’ll go through in this post.

I’ve included illustrations of each (sub)species, made by a good friend of mine - Robin Liesens, also known as Dontknowwhattodraw94 on DeviantArt. I recommend you check out his gallery and YouTube channel if you’re interested in seeing more of his fantastic paleoart.

Before I dig deeper, I’ll set the stage:

Cave bears form a monophyletic group[1] within the genus Ursus - i.e. all members of said group share a single common ancestor, whose descendants are all included within the group. This clade, sometimes given the subgenus name Spelearctos , or the spelaeoid bears, is a sister lineage to the U. arctos-maritimus group - the brown and polar bears, known also as the arctoid bears. Molecular evidence suggests a split date of about 1.2 million years between these two lineages, with their common ancestor most likely being U. etruscus or a similar species. This makes modern brown and polar bears the closest modern relatives of the extinct cave bears.

Now, lets start... Ursus dolinensis, the Gran Dolina cave bear. This is the most basal cave bear species known, with morphological analyses showing a suite of primitive traits, placing this bear very close to the common ancestor with U. arctos. The original remains of this diminutive bear are known from the eponymous site of Grand Dolina in the Atapuerca mountains in Spain, though subsequent remains attributed to this species have also been found in Germany. Dating at these sites puts the Grand Dolina cave bear at an age of about 1 million to 780,000 years ago, the Early Pleistocene.

Given its primitive features, it is regarded as basal to, or potentially the ancestor of, U. savini 

[brobear]

Ursus dolinensis.

[brobear]

Continued...
Ursus savini, the steppe cave bear. This species is considered as a sister species to U. deningeri. The steppe cave bear was first described in 1922 from middle Pleistocene deposits in Bacton, England, but fossil evidence has also led to the inclusion of some more recent cave bear taxa (previously thought to be closer allied to U. deningeri) as late subspecies of U. savini. The far-flung locations of these subspecies suggest that the steppe cave bear had an Asian-Siberian origin, and their environmental context, as well that of the type locality, has led to its christened common name. Based on craniodental morphology, the authors of a new 2017 study have argued that it was well adapted to grazing (most other cave bears appear to have preferred boreal forest areas), and environmental data puts the bears in mosaic landscape settings of mixed woodland and steppe - hilly, but not mountainous.Two subspecies of this bear are currently recognized:

Ursus savini nordostensis, the Beringian cave bear. The most northwestern cave bear know, found in Cherskiy, in the northeastern part of arctic Siberia, along the Kolyma river. The dating for its locality are very imprecise, ranging from between 0.5 and 1.5 million years. The environmental settings in which it was found indicates steppe-tundra, with very few caves. While it inhabited what is technically known as Beringia, there is no evidence that it spread to North America. Based on its remains, it appears to be a relatively small bear, at about the size of a modern black bear.