Paleontologists from Yekaterinburg discovered a burial of ancient cave bears in the Urals. The remains are more than 30 thousand years old, said a senior researcher at the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology of the Ural Department, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Pavel Kosintsev, cited by the Russian Geographical Society. He said that such caves had beed known in the Urals before. Similar cemeteries are already being explored in the northern and southern parts of the region. But all of them were discovered long time ago: last time such a cavern in the Urals was discovered in the 60s. Moreover, many caves had already been looted. And this cave was discovered by speleologists not so long ago, it is untouched therefore it is of particular value to researchers.
The remains of ten bears were found in the cave - females, males and cubs. According to Pavel Kosintsev, they belong to ancient animals that stayed in the cave for the winter. The scientist noted that the discovery will help find the way the bears looked, their age, diet and habitat in the Urals. The scientists will also have an opportunity to find out whether that ancient animal could inhabit the entire territory of the region.
The new burial will also enable the researchers to determine the cause of the extinction of large cave bears. These animals, according to the scientist, were quite large, they did not have natural predators. Ancient people didn’t hunt cave bears opting for a more convenient and simple prey. Pavel Kosintsev noted that no trace of human activity was found on any bone.
The findings have already been sent to the laboratory for further study. In addition to the bear burial, there are traces of ancient hunters in the cave - bones of wild moose, most likely killed by humans, and the tip of a spear. The age of the finds is reportedly 4–5 thousand years.
Caves with large burials are found all over Western Europe and in various regions of Russia including the Caucasus. Previously, the Russian Geographical Society reported that the remains of five prehistoric bears were discovered in March 2019 by Irkutsk paleontologists in a remote part of the Botovskaya cave. The discovery was made during an international speleological expedition under the auspices of the Russian Geographical Society. According to experts, the skeletons found are several hundred thousand years old.
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