When mountain guide Kurt Walde is traveling in the Dolomites in Val Badia, he makes an extraordinary discovery: high up in a rock face, the entrance to a cave opens. Deep in the mountain lie the remains of the prehistoric cave bear Ursus spelaeus ladinicus.
“Experience something like that is incredible,” says Walde into the camera, with which he captures his first impressions shortly after entering the cave. The mountain guide is also a speleologist, and the discovery last July was no coincidence. “You can only find a cave like this specifically,” he recently told ORF. “With a lot of effort I found the entrance at 2800 meters on the Koltoron.”
Shortly after the discovery, a team of archaeologists flew to the site by helicopter to carry out initial measurements. "We went in with protective clothing so as not to contaminate the cave. We then wanted to lock it in a burglar-proof manner so that unauthorized persons had no access," explains Christian Terzer, director of the Office of Archeology in Bolzano (South Tyrol), when asked by WELT.
This is intended to prevent a repeat of what happened to the Conturines Cave, which is also located in the South Tyrolean Alps: it was almost completely looted before excavations began in 1987. This first cave is on the same mountain range on the opposite side, slightly deeper than the new find. It is possible that both caves were originally connected. “That’s the first thing to check,” says Terzer.
The scientific significance of the find lies primarily in the fact that the interior of the cave is a kind of time capsule, untouched by modern influences. “We have to preserve this integrity, because DNA studies on sediments and bone fragments as well as paleobotanical and paleoclimatological analyzes are planned,” explains Terzer.
That's why the archaeologists put a protective tarpaulin at the entrance, like the one used for renovations in hospitals during ongoing operations. They would only have entered the cave wearing protective clothing, which is also used when examining the glacier mummy Ötzi. So far only a single bone has been recovered, which was so close to the entrance that it would have been damaged during the work.
Thousands of bones lie scattered inside, some still in anatomical context. “We will therefore certainly be able to reconstruct individual animals,” says Terzer to WELT. His office is currently planning an interdisciplinary research project with international participation, involving paleontologists, climate researchers, paleobotanists, speleologists and specialists in ancient DNA.
However, with the onset of winter, the rock face has no longer been accessible this week. The actual exploration of the cave is scheduled to begin in June 2027.
The cave bear was one of the most impressive large mammals in Ice Age Europe. He reached a shoulder height of around 1.70 meters and when erect he measured around 3.50 meters. Adult animals weighed up to a ton. Like the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, giant deer and cave lion, it belonged to the Ice Age megafauna, and like them it became extinct, according to current knowledge, around 20,000 years ago.
By comparing bear genomes from more than a dozen European caves, an international research team concluded that humans were probably responsible for the cave bear's disappearance. “After a comparatively stable phase, the dramatic collapse in cave bear diversity and population coincides with the appearance of modern humans,” said Verena Schünemann from the Institute for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich.
Using the mitochondrial genome of 59 cave bears and previously published data, the researchers reconstructed a comprehensive family tree that traces the decline of the species. The results appeared in the journal “Scientific Reports” in 2019. The extinction was accelerated by the bear's lifestyle. The herbivores remained loyal to their birth caves, which were usually located in particularly favorable, fertile terrain. Since humans also claimed caves for themselves, they increasingly became competitors to local bears. The population, which had been decimated by hunting, was no longer able to recover. In addition, there was a shortage of plants during the last ice age.
Other researchers had suspected that specialization in certain foods was the bear's downfall: many animals died in hibernation because they could not store enough fat reserves for long, severe cold periods. According to the study, this is contradicted by the fact that the cave bear had already survived two cold phases and its decline began before the peak of the last ice age around 25,000 years ago.
It has long been known that people hunted cave bears, but the extent of it was unclear. Bear bones with projectile points stuck in them as well as bones with cut and scratch marks were found. “Cave bears also had their heads cut off, they were fleshed and served as food for humans,” explains co-author Susanne Münzel from the Institute for Natural Archeology at the University of Tübingen.
