name Ursus spelaeus time Pleistocene to Recent locality Europe Austria
Germany, Netherlands, Spain, UK and USSR) size: 6 ft 6 in/2 m long The genus Ursus is represented today by the brown, or grizzly, bear, the polar bear and the American black bear. But in Pleistocene times, the cave bear, Ursus spelaeus, was a particularly numerous and impressive species.
It lived in Europe during the height of the Ice Age, and often escaped the worst of the winters by hibernating in Alpine caves. Many bears seem to have congregated together for this long, annual sleep, to judge from the heaps of fossil bones found together. One cave, the Drachenhohle, or "Dragon's Cave," in Austria, contains the remains of more than 30,000 cave bears. And many of them seem to have died in their sleep.
Despite its great size and fearsome appearance, the cave bear was probably a vegetarian. It was hunted by Nean-dertal people, and its bones were important in their rituals (see pp. 295, 297).
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