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Recreating Lost Beasts
Topic Started: Dec 7 2016, 07:21 AM (920 Views)
Beetleboy
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The ecology, appearance, and behaviour of extinct species has always been a major interest of mine, so I have been working on this little project - trying to piece together the evidence and make the most accurate view of Ice Age animals as possible. My primary tool in doing so is an unusual and sadly neglected goldmine of information: cave art. It was made by people who had seen, interacted, hunted these animals - if modern day tribes and such are anything to go by, they would have known a great deal about these creatures. Now, cave art can be simple and not give us much information - but there are cases were patterns can be seen on the animals, giving us an insight into their appearance in life. It doesn't make a great deal of sense for one of these ancient people to draw an animal which is spotty and give it stripes just for the hell of it. This really does excite me: there is a wealth of information in this art, yet many people ignore it. I'm going to try and use it to help me create an accurate image of what these creatures looked like in reality. For me, this is an exciting and interesting thought excersise, and seems to bring you closer to these extinct beasts. You'd be surprised how much we can tell from cave art.

I will also use information from new studies etc to try and create an accurate picture of an animal's ecology, appearance, relationship with humans, etc.

The result will be a kind of speculative but hopefully rather accurate field guide. This could be useful as a guideline for alt evo projects, writing projects set during the Ice Age, etc.

The first species that I am working on has turned out to be a rather difficult one, the cave bear. Non the less, I'm still researching and writing, so expect an update at some point.

The Beasts:
Cave Bears
Edited by Beetleboy, Dec 7 2016, 09:09 AM.
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Beetleboy
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Cave bear
Ursus spelaeus


Description:

The cave bear could be found in Europe during the Pleistocene, and are best known for the majority of their fossils having been found in caves. They have a distinctive broad skull with a steeply sloping forehead, but the rest of their skeleton is very similar to that of a brown bear. Their size is comparable to modern day large bears, and they have pronounced sexual dimorphism in that males are larger than females, so much so that 90% of fossils seen in museums are males due to females being thought to be 'dwarves'.

Appearance:


First of all, let's take a look at cave art to see if it can tell us anything.
Unfortunately, I've been unable to find many pieces showing cave bears, but there are a few:

Posted Image

These are the Red Bears of Chauvet Cave, France. Interestingly, this same cave also shows many signs of cave bears having lived there, scratch marks on the walls, fossils, etc. Unfortunately these depictions of cave bears are lacking in any patterns or clues to their colour – the red pigment used for the outline can not be said with any certainty to portray the true colour, as ochre is commonly used in cave paintings.
If the Red Bears cannot tell us anything about the colour, can they show us anything else? Look at those ears. They're pretty small, which shows us that at least some cave bears probably didn't have large shaggy ears like Tibetan blue bears and sloth bears do. This could have been to help conserve heat and avoid frostbite, which would be particularly useful for populations living in the most cold areas.
There is one other piece of art which is interesting, and it is from the same cave in France as the Red Bears above:

Posted Image

The smaller creature is clearly some kind of big cat, whereas the one above it is a bear, and taking the skull shape into account, it looks to be a cave bear. The artist has given leopard-like spotted markings to the cat, but has not stopped there, he has also given it to the bear, at least above its front limbs and on its head. What do these markings show? Some have suggested that it indicates thick, shaggy fur, but we can't really say for certain. The most interesting option is to intepret the spots as, well, spots. Perhaps only certain cave bear populations and subspecies had these markings, perhaps to help break up their outline in the forest. Or of course it could not show spots but something else, like shaggy fur as previously suggested.

The truth is, cave paintings depicting this species of bear are sadly lacking. One of the few locations where they can be seen are at the Chauvet Cave mentioned above. Therefore, putting aside cave art for this entry, let us instead use some healthy speculation based on modern bears.

First of all, let's look at the cave bear's closest relatives: the brown bears and the polar bears. Many reconstructions have assumed that cave bears will look like their relatives, the brown bears, and have coloured them thus, but I disagree.
Cave bears lived mostly in forests (although it is probable that some subspecies lived in more open habitats), which would make them more similar to American black bears. A black pelage makes sense in a forest, blending in with the shadows. Grizzly bears, on the other hand, can be found in open habitats more frequently than most black bears.

To conclude, I think that it is most likely that cave bears had dark fur. However, there were several subspecies of cave bears, so it is likely that there were multiple colour variants, and perhaps some of these spent more time on the open plains rather than in the forests, and so had a lighter fur colour than their forest-dwelling counterparts. A mostly dark but varied fur colour seems likely for cave bears.

Distribution and Habitat:
Cave bears could be found across Europe, from Britain to Russia. Notably, they could not be found in Scotland, Scandinavia, or the Baltic states, which were at the time covered in glaciers, which would have been an unsuitable home for cave bears. They seem to have been particularly common in the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Carpathians.
They cannot generally be found at very high altitude, but still prefer mountainous areas, covered in forests. Woodland seems to be the primary habitat of cave bears, with regions of open plains being comparatively bear of fossils (see what I did there?). Of course, given the number of cave bear subspecies, some may have lived in more open regions.

Diet:
There are several aspects of cave bear dentition that strongly points towards a vegetarian diet. What is more, the low levels of nitrogen-15 and carbon-13 in their bones are fairly clear indicators of herbivory, as carnivores tend to have larger amounts, although some individuals found in Romania have somewhat elevated nitrogen-15 levels.
Despite all of the evidence for a herbivorous diet, tooth marks on cave bear bones have been found, the marks matching the dentition of the cave bears themselves, possibly pointing towards scavenging cannabilism.
It seems most likely that while cave bears were mostly herbivores, they were also opportunistic, and would eat meat if they got the chance. An omnivore, then, but probably with a preference towards plant material.

Behaviour:
Probably due to their dependence on plants, cave bears hibernated during the winter months. Death during hibernation seems to have been a common cause of mortality for the species, either because they fill ill during this time, or when cave lions, maybe desperate for food, crept into the caves and tried to attack hibernating individuals, probably targeting the ill and the young. Cave lion skeletons can be found in the bear dens, probably due to them being killed by an angry and sleepy bear defending itself. These skeletons are generally fairly intact and fully articulated, showing that only in rare cases would the bear eat the attacking lion that it has killed.
Interestingly, cave bear males have been found with broken bacula (penis bone). This may indicate that males fighting over the right to mate might damage the opponent's baculum, making it impossible for them to mate.
Cave bears would probably have been fairly safe from most predators, although wolves, cave hyenas, and the occaisonal cave lion may have been a threat, leading to the bears sticking to the thickly forested areas and being fairly well camouflaged.

Relationship with Humans:
It does not seem likely that humans would have hunted cave bears, or that bears would have frequently hunted humans, although attacks would have undoubtedly have happened from time to time, perhaps due to competition over caves. Given that cave bears tended to live in the forests, probably quite well hidden amongst the thick brush, interaction between humans and bears was probably fairly rare, leading to the lack of cave paintings depicting the species. Cave art generally seems to show creatures that are important to everyday life, so perhaps this indicates that cave bears were quite shy and rarely seen. I could imagine these ancient people seeing the bears as a mysterious spirit, the embodiment of the forest, and directly associated with the woodlands. Perhaps they were also closely associated with caves, too.
Interestingly, despite the seeming lack of interaction with live bears, with the case of dead bears, it seems to be a different story. A cave in Switzerland had more than 30,000 bear skeletons in it, as well as a cist made of limestone slabs which contained several cave bear skulls. A bear skull has been found with a femur bone stuck inside it, and there are other cases of neanderthals using bear skeletons for seemingly ritual purposes. What ancient people did with these bones and what they thought they did we may never know, but it seems certain that early man had connected some kind of ritual or spiritual purpose to cave bears and/or their skeletons.
In the end, it may have been humans that drove cave bears to extinction, not due to hunting, but due to loss of hibernating sites. The cave bears relied heavily on the caverns for a place to hibernate and possibly as the place to give birth to their cubs. As human populations expanded, spreading throughout European caves, the bears were hard-pushed to find a cave where they wouldn't be driven away, and so drifted into extinction, probably helped along by other causes.

The whole profile is subject to change depending on new discoveries.
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Yiqi15
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Very cool idea. Can't wait for the next update.
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Beetleboy
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Yiqi15
Dec 7 2016, 12:04 PM
Very cool idea. Can't wait for the next update.
Thank you. I'm thinking about doing a short profile on short-facec bears next.
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Monster
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Cave bears lived mostly in forests (although it is probable that some subspecies lived in more open habitats), which would make them more similar to American black bears. A black pelage makes sense in a forest, blending in with the shadows. Grizzly bears, on the other hand, can be found in open habitats more frequently than most black bears[


Just a small nitpick.Grizzlies are an American subspecies/population of brown bear - Eurasian brown bears are not grizzlies and they live in many types of habitat including forests. There is quite a bit of variation in coat colours across their range - light to dark, tipped hairs, reddish-yellowish, a lighter 'cape' etc in different areas.
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Scrublord
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I doubt cave bears would have had spots; no living bear has spots. Spotted fur is really useful only if you're an forest-dweller or an ambush hunter, since they break up your outline. That's why big cats often have spots. But as an herbivore that lived in an open environment, the cave bear would have no need for such markings.
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Beetleboy
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Monster
Dec 7 2016, 02:30 PM
Quote:
 
Cave bears lived mostly in forests (although it is probable that some subspecies lived in more open habitats), which would make them more similar to American black bears. A black pelage makes sense in a forest, blending in with the shadows. Grizzly bears, on the other hand, can be found in open habitats more frequently than most black bears[


Just a small nitpick.Grizzlies are an American subspecies/population of brown bear - Eurasian brown bears are not grizzlies and they live in many types of habitat including forests. There is quite a bit of variation in coat colours across their range - light to dark, tipped hairs, reddish-yellowish, a lighter 'cape' etc in different areas.
Brown bears can of course be found in forests, but they are found in open areas more frequently than black bears are.

Quote:
 
I doubt cave bears would have had spots; no living bear has spots. Spotted fur is really useful only if you're an forest-dweller or an ambush hunter, since they break up your outline. That's why big cats often have spots. But as an herbivore that lived in an open environment, the cave bear would have no need for such markings.

And yet these bears were forest dwellers, as multiple sources state. It clearly states in my post too, and I also make the case for them being omnivores, not carnivores...
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Scrublord
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Even so, spotted coloration is essentially unheard of in the entire suborder Caniformes, which bears belong to. The only carnivores with spotted coats belong to the Feliformes suborder.
In fact, I can't think of a single terrestrial caniform carnivoran with spotted markings. The only members of the order Carnivora that have such markings are cats, civets, mongooses, and hyenas, none of which are closely related to bears.
Edited by Scrublord, Dec 7 2016, 07:32 PM.
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Yiqi15
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Scrublord
Dec 7 2016, 07:21 PM
Even so, spotted coloration is essentially unheard of in the entire suborder Caniformes.
Um, what about dalmatian dogs? They were done via artificial selection, but still....
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Not a good example, because domestic dogs have an unusually high genetic plasticity that allows them to be bred in ways that would never occur in nature.
Bears don't have this, which is why they are all essentially similar in appearance and coloration. All bears are either completely one color or have very broad areas of black and white in the case of the giant panda.

Given that, it's possible that the spotted bear in the cave painting may not be a bear at all. It has a very tall shoulder and small feet. Instead of a bear, it could possibly be one of the large, robust hyenas that inhabited Europe around this time. It also has a thick line running down the back of its neck, which suggests a "mane" of some sort. Manes aren't found in bears, but are a classic feature of hyenas, along with spots and a sloping back.
Take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_hyena#/media/File:Crocuta_crocuta_cave_art_-_Chauvet_cave.png
As for its size? The cave hyena (the species that lived in Europe at the time) was much larger than any hyena alive today, growing up to the size of a lion.
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Icthyander
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Just because there aren't any living examples in no way means that it couldn't be spotted, especially if there is both reasoning and a reason.

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These aren't true spots, but it certainly shows mottled coats are possible in caniforms even in a non-forest environment.

Plus, the sun bear, Asiatic black bear, giant panda, and spectacled bear all have variant, non-solid coloration on the face and chest.
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I find it odd that people would ignore cave art. To my mind, seeing depictions of these animals by the people who actually saw them in life is invaluable information.
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Dec 7 2016, 08:01 PM
I find it odd that people would ignore cave art. To my mind, seeing depictions of these animals by the people who actually saw them in life is invaluable information.
I more think that the second picture doesn't really look like a bear. I tend to think it's a hyena. Too gracile.

And besides, artistic embellishment can happen.
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Icthyander
Dec 7 2016, 07:47 PM
Just because there aren't any living examples in no way means that it couldn't be spotted, especially if there is both reasoning and a reason.

Spoiler: click to toggle

These aren't true spots, but it certainly shows mottled coats are possible in caniforms even in a non-forest environment.

Plus, the sun bear, Asiatic black bear, giant panda, and spectacled bear all have variant, non-solid coloration on the face and chest.
But none of them have spots the same way that big cats do. There aren't any caniformians with leopard- or even hyena-like spots.
African hunting dogs do have mottled fur, but they don't have a regular, even coating of spots the way many cats do. As a matter of fact, large blotches of light and dark (as opposed to small spots) are close to being a caniform monopoly. Ferrets, skunks, raccoons, certain canids, and bears all have these large, contrasting markings. But none of them have spots. And likewise none of the feliformians have bold, blotchy markings--they all have vertical stripes or small spots.

Spots seem to be one of many features that feliformians evolved but caniformians never did. They also were the only carnivoran suborder to have, for instance, saber-teeth (walruses have tusks, but those aren't the same thing) and fully retractable claws. I'm open to the possibility of a bear with leopard-like spots, but phylogenetic bracketing makes it unlikely.
Edited by Scrublord, Dec 7 2016, 08:18 PM.
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Icthyander
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flashman63
Dec 7 2016, 08:12 PM
I more think that the seconnd picture doesn't really look like a bear. I tend to think it's a hyena.
Wikipedia suggests it a bear later retouched as a hyena.
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