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 last common ancestor of cave bears and brown bears lived between 1.2–1.4 Mya. 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.īoth 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.
Ĭave bear bones are found in several caves in the country of Georgia. In Romania, in a cave called Bears' Cave, 140 cave bear skeletons were discovered in 1983. A complete skeleton, five complete skulls, and 18 other bones were found inside Kletno Bear Cave, in 1966 in Poland. Many caves in Central Europe have skeletons of cave bears inside, such as the Heinrichshöhle in Hemer and the Dechenhöhle in Iserlohn, Germany. When the "dragon caves" in Austria’s Styria region were exploited for this purpose, only the skulls and leg bones were kept. During World War I, with the scarcity of phosphate dung, earth from the caves where cave bear bones occurred was used as a source of phosphates. The bones were so numerous that most researchers had little regard for them.
Twenty years later, Johann Christian Rosenmüller, an anatomist at Leipzig University, gave the species its binomial name. 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.
Cave bear skeletons were first described in 1774 by Johann Friedrich Esper, in his book Newly Discovered Zoolites of Unknown Four Footed Animals.
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