History of Cave Bear Discoveries
Cave bear skeletons were first described in 1774 by Johann Friederich Esper in his book Newly Discovered Zoolites of Unknown Four Footed Animals. Originally thought to belong to dragons, unicorns, apes, canids or felids, Esper postulated they actually belonged to polar bears. Twenty years later, Johann Christian Rosenmüller, an anatomist at the Leipzig University, gave the species its binomial name. The bones were so numerous, most researchers held little respect for them. During World War I, large amounts of cave bear bones were used as a source of phosphates, leaving behind little more than skulls and leg bones.
Many caves in Central Europe have skeletons of cave bears inside, for example the Heinrichshöhle in Hemer or the Dechenhöhle in Iserlohn, Germany. In Romania, in a cave called Bears' Cave, 140 cave bear skeletons were discovered in 1983.
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