Cave Bear Bone Fragment, from Hateg Mountains, Romania (REF:CB15)

The Cave Bear (Ursus spelaeus) is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago.

Ursus refers to the cave, the brown, and the grizzly bear. Fossil remains are usually of the cave bear. It’s characteristic include a skull with a high forehead, loss of the anterior premolars, and low-crowned cheek teeth with many tiny cusps on the crushing surfaces.

  

They lived in temperate wood-land and in winter they hibernated in caves. Many European caves have been found to contain extraordinary quantities of cave bear remains.