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.
Read more about this topic: Cave Bear
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, cave, bear and/or discoveries:
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The human mind is indeed a cave swarming with strange forms of life, most of them unconscious and unilluminated. Unless we can understand something as to how the motives that issue from this obscurity are generated, we can hardly hope to foresee or control them.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“Today’s comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an “act” and he told the audience, “This is my act.” Today’s comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he’s telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.”
—Lenny Bruce (1925–1966)
“The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)