According to this study, the morphological differences between U. For a recent review of most described cave bear taxa and a somewhat different conception of their classification based on craniometrical features see Baryshnikov and Puzachenko (2011). ladinicus, were discerned whereas the 'classic' Western Europe cave bear was called U. spelaeus several high-alpine forms with reduced body size, named U. They separated between 173,000-414,000 yr BP according to molecular dating (Knapp et al., 2009). ingressus (Rabeder, 1995 Hofreiter et al., 2004b Rabeder and Hofreiter, 2004 Rabeder et al., 2004a, 2004b). The results of both morphological and genetic studies have shown that during the Late Pleistocene, Europe was inhabited by two main cave bear haplogroups described as separate species, U. spelaeus) evolved gradually from the Middle Pleistocene cave bears from the deningeri-group still before the Last Interglacial (Mazza and Rustioni, 1994 Rabeder et al., 2000, 2010). It is usually assumed that Late Pleistocene cave bears (Ursus ex gr.

Cave bears diverged from their sister lineage leading to the brown bear (Ursus arctos), approximately 1.2-1.7 million years ago according to palaeontological (Kurtén, 1968, 1976 Rustioni and Mazza, 1992 Rabeder and Withalm, 2006) and molecular data (Loreille et al., 2001 Bon et al., 2008), although some calculations indicate an earlier split about 2.8 million years ago (Krause et al., 2008).

Its fossil material is quite abundant in cave sites across Europe and Asia, and in many cases preserved sufficiently well to allow ancient DNA (aDNA) extraction and analysis (e.g., Hänni et al., 1994 Loreille et al., 2001 Hofreiter et al., 2002, 2004a, 2004b, 2007 Orlando et al., 2002 Noonan et al., 2005 Valdiosera et al., 2006 Bon et al., 2008 Krause et al., 2008 Knapp et al., 2009 Stiller et al., 2010). Out of the big mammal species that went extinct during the Pleistocene, the cave bear is probably the most thoroughly genetically studied one. content/2012-issue-2-articles/263-cave-bears-from-poland

The Cave Bear Story by Björn Kurtén