Ursus spelaeus (Rosenmüller, 1794) during the MIS 3: temporal population distributions and relationship with climatic fluctuations

Ursus spelaeus, the Late Pleistocene a cave bear is known from numerous accumulations found in the fossil sector of caves situated in the Carpathian and Apuseni Mountains. In this study, we present approximate population variation in time using the temporal distribution and interval frequencies of radiocarbon ages from literature. Most of the dated skeletons were preserved in caves. The data suggest that, during the entire Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3) interval,  caves were serving as a shelter for U. spelaeus, with the oldest dated bone indicating ages over 60,000 and the youngest ones less than 30.000 years cal BP. Histogram plots of over 110 radiocarbon data from different caves of the Carpathian and Apuseni Mountains as Cioclovina Uscată, Peștera (Cave) cu Oase, Peștera Muierii, or Peștera Urșilor, respectively, show a maximum expansion of the cave bear population between 50,000 and 40,000, a decline between 40,000 and 35,000 and a partial recovery from 35,000–30,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon data of Homo sapiens remains, younger than 35,000 years cal BP, support the fact that H. sapiens accessed the same caves where the cave bear persisted to hibernate. Besides general cool conditions and restricted food sources, the presence of H. sapiens constituted an additional stress factor driving the cave bear to extinction (Bojar et al., 2024).

References

Ana-Voica Bojar, Natalia Piotrowska, Victor Barbu, Hans-Peter Bojar, Fatima Pawełczyk, Andrei Smeu & Ovidiu Guja: Ursus spelaeus (Rosenmüller, 1794) during the MIS 3: new evidence from the Cioclovina Uscată Cave and radiocarbon age overview for the Carpathians, Isotopes in Environmental and Health Studies, DOI: 10.1080/10256016.2024.2376730