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Post by grrraaahhh on Nov 10, 2010 19:57:58 GMT -9
Ancient Cave Bears Were As Omnivorous As Modern BearsRather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time: hyaenas, lions, wolves, and our own human ancestors.
The interpretation of them as vegetarian has evoked an image of gentle giants, feeding on berries and roots. However, new nitrogen isotope data from the Pe_tera cu Oase in southwestern Romania shows otherwise.
Although many of these cave bears appear to have been largely vegetarian, the Oase bears and scattered individuals from other cave sites show that they were sometimes as omnivorous as modern brown bears, including North American Kodiak and grizzly bears. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107181603.htm
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Post by grrraaahhh on Aug 20, 2011 5:37:31 GMT -9
Ancient Cave Bears Were As Omnivorous As Modern BearsRather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time: hyaenas, lions, wolves, and our own human ancestors.
The interpretation of them as vegetarian has evoked an image of gentle giants, feeding on berries and roots. However, new nitrogen isotope data from the Pe_tera cu Oase in southwestern Romania shows otherwise.
Although many of these cave bears appear to have been largely vegetarian, the Oase bears and scattered individuals from other cave sites show that they were sometimes as omnivorous as modern brown bears, including North American Kodiak and grizzly bears. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107181603.htm More follow up studies confirm scavenging diet in some Eurasian Cave Bears: Abstract The cave bear Ursus spelaeus fossils remains are quite abundant in the Late Pleistocene site of Coro Tracito (Huesca, Spain). The site constitutes the highest mountain record of cave bears in the Iberian Peninsula. Being a monospecific locality, it permits the study of the biology and dietary habits of this species. The study of the limb bones established first, the mortality pattern of this population of Ursus spelaeus and, second, the alteration pattern due to carnivore tooth-marks. Some authors have performed similar analyses in the same kind of skeletal elements in other cave bear localities all over Europe and, therefore it has been possible to compare our results with those from other sites. The tooth-marks found in the bones of cave bears, especially in monospecific sites, have been attributed to a scavenging behaviour. In agreement with the authors, our analysis presented here supports the hypothesis of scavenging behaviour for cave bears. □Behaviour, Late Pleistocene, Spain, taphonomy, tooth-marks, Ursus spelaeus. RABAL-GARCÉS, R., CUENCA-BESCÓS, G., IGNACIO CANUDO, J. and DE TORRES, T. (2011), Was the European cave bear an occasional scavenger? Lethaia. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1502-3931.2011.00260.x/abstractFollow up blog on the recent Garcés article: A study by paleontologists from the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) shows that the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) Was a scavenger species that eat the remains of their fellows. This implies that the diet was not entirely herbivorous species, as previously believed, but omnivorous, according to results of work done by the research group Aragosaurus and has just been published in the journal Lethaia [....] For more, read here: www.scienceknowledge.org/2011/04/02/the-cave-bear-was-a-scavenger/ |
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