An article published in “Journal of Quaternary Science” describes a research on the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) (photo ©Ra’ike). An international team of paleontologists led by Professor Hervé Bocherens of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (HEP) at the University of Tübingen studied the bones of these ancient animals and concluded that their diet was vegan. They also propose the hypothesis that their diet was wat led to the extinction of these bears about 25,000 years ago.
The cave bear has been known for a long time but only in 1774 Johann Friederich Esper proposed the idea that it was a bear while other scientists of the time thought that it was another kind of animal. Studies more rigorous from the scientific point of view made it possible to get more information about this animal, whose name is due to the fact that its fossil bones have been found in caves where it went to hibernate.
It was a large species that lived in Europe during the Pleistocene period. The average size was similar to that of the grizzly ranging between 225 and 500 kg (500 to 1,100 lbs) in weight, between 2.7 and 3.5 meters (8.9″ to 11.5″) in length and could reach 1.7 meters (5.6″) at the shoulder. Among the many caves in which cave bears bones were found there’s Goyet Cave in Belgium and many of those bones were examined in the course of this research.
In particular, the exam focused on collagen, an organic compound crucial for connective tissues of various parts of the animal body, including bones, teeth, cartilage, ligaments and skin. The isotopic composition of the various collagen amino acids can provide information on the animal’s diet and in the cave bear case the collagen exam’s conclusion indicates that it was a strictly herbivorous diet.
Generally, bears are omnivores but there are some exceptions. The panda is a limit case with its diet based on bamboo shoots but there’s also the Marsican brown bear (Ursus arctos marsicanus), which is 90% vegetarian. The cave bear’s teeth already indicated an evolution into a vegetarian, this new research indicates that its diet was pretty extreme.
These results led the researchers to speculate that the too rigid diet was the cause of the cave bear’s extinction. Discussions on that extinction have been going on for decades and the arguments include climate change, hunting by humans and also the lack of food. The reduced availability of plants to eat during the last ice age could have caused their extinction.
The researchers plan to continue their studies examining other cave bear bones found in other European places again using collagen analysis. This will make it possible to tell whether that diet so strict was limited to the bears of Goyet or if it was typical for that species.
