Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Climate change, not people, killed cave bears
Cave bears (left) would have been fearsome neighbours in the Stone Age — weighing up to a tonne or about 200 kg bigger than the modern heavyweights, the polar bear or the Kodiak bear.
But it turns out that they were largely vegetarian and went extinct earlier than expected as the Ice Age spread over Europe about 28,000 years ago.
Many of them apparently froze to death as they hibernated.
Brrrr! Or imagine waking up in spring to find a thick ice sheet has formed over the entrance to your cave home and trapped you inside.
So natural climate change wiped them out, rather than human hunters often blamed for killing them off about 13,000 years later, according to a study in the journal Boreas today.
