Cave Bear Comparison 3

Check it out—the current crown jewel of my collection: a juvenile Ursus spelaeus skull, compared in this picture to my big antique brown bear skull.

Cave bears were giant relatives of the brown bear with fossils found in large numbers in caves throughout Europe. These bears were larger and stockier overall than their modern cousins, with robust skulls, bigger teeth, and a characteristic high-domed forehead (particularly in males). The went extinct towards the end of the Pleistocene with many other megafauna in Europe, about 24,000 years ago.

This baby was still growing in its adult dentition, so if cave bears aged similarly to modern brownies, it was probably somewhere between one and two years old when it died. Brown bears have their full complement of adult teeth by the age of two. 

In this picture, you can really see the difference in tooth size between the cave bear and its modern relative. The bigger bear on the right is an old adult brown bear, but its teeth are much smaller and its skull less robust overall than the cave bear's. 

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All images in this gallery are posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, so feel free to use them as references and in your own work. All I ask is that you share your creations in the submission comments! 

Unless otherwise noted, all skulls and parts in my collection are real, legally-obtained hunting byproducts. No animals were killed for their skulls alone. If hunting ain't your thing, that's fine, but please be kind to those who are interested! This isn't the place for debate.