Bears of the Pleistocene

[GrizzlyClaws]

(01-06-2018, 10:20 PM)brotherbear Wrote: Two questions: I know that U. deningeri was an ancestral cave bear that looked very similar to a grizzly. I am wondering if perhaps U. speleaus and U. ingressus might actually be two subspecies of the same cave bear?  My other question is; did U. ingressus have the short hind legs giving him the sloping back profile as we see in U. speleaus?

Anatomically, there isn't many comparison between speleaus and ingressus, assume they were very similar to each other, except the former one was more herbivorous, while the latter one was more carnivorous.

But ingressus as a subspecies of spelaeus could also be viable, since these two Cave bear groups didn't have any geographical barrier that split them.

BTW, all Cave bear species derived from the Etruscan bear population in Europe, while the Brown bear lineage evolved from the Etruscan bear population in China. So that's the difference between the basal ancestry of the Cave bear and Brown bear. Reply