Prehistoric humans caused the extinction of the cave bear
Extinct cave bear skeleton
The numbers of these huge animals in Europe remained stable until humans arrived 40,000 years ago on the continent
Humans drove the herbivorous bears that inhabited continental Europe to extinction about 24,000 years ago, according to a recent study that analyzed the DNA of those animals.
The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, indicate that bear populations began to decline sharply about 40,000 years ago. This decline coincided with the spread of "anatomically modern Homo sapiens," as it is called, in Europe and with the era before the extremely cold climate.
In this regard, the researchers wrote, "Our study supports the possibility that humans played a major role in the extinction of animals in general, and in the destruction of cave bears in Europe in particular. It also clarifies the fate of this type of megafauna."
In the details, researchers led by Verina Schoenemann of the Swiss University of Zurich and Hervé Bucherns of the German University of Tübingen reconstructed 59 mitochondrial genomes (or the mitochondrial genome) from the bones of cave bears. They collected samples from 14 European sites in Switzerland, Poland, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Serbia.
Next, the team compared those genomes with 64 other mitochondrial genomes whose data had been published in previous studies, in an attempt to find out where different populations of cave bears lived and how they migrated during the late Pleistocene.
Accordingly, they identified five major lineages of mitochondrial DNA that arose from a common ancestor of these animals about 451,000 years ago and were distributed throughout Europe, indicating that the distribution of the cave bear was more complex than previously thought.
Thus, cave bear numbers remained relatively stable until about 40,000 years ago, including through two cold epochs and several other cold waves, scientists estimate.
Scientists say that given that the cold climate in the last ice age began later, after about 30,000 years, the results indicate the possibility that other factors may have played a remarkable role in the destruction of these animals, such as hunting, which humans resorted to.
The study also shows that the extremely cold climate and the subsequent decrease in the availability of food from plants may have resulted in the division of the overall bear population into various sub-herds. So it is possible that they resorted to more moderate climates and different plants are more widespread in them.
As a result, by disrupting communication between sub-populations of cave bears, humans may have played a decisive role in the extinction of this species of animal, according to the study.
Source : websites