Clan of the Cave Bear

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/20...-in-thawing-permafrost-of-arctic-russia/

Wait until they find one of Fred Bear's arrows in it......................

Big sucker! I have all the CAVE BEAR books.

Very cool. Love things like this.

Wait till Jack sees this

Wonder if they can resurrect any new viruses from it?

wonder if they can clone one now

I just wonder if we can believe anything the Russians say? Do we have any proof to back this up? Possibly fake news?

Another bonus of the warming climate.

X2 .
Great author.

White, Sharon, et al. -

Some time ago, I'm guessing about 1991 or 1992, I'm doing summer gyrfalcon/peregrine falcon surveys (looking for nests) in some interior Alaska karst from my SuperCub. I notice a black hole in the top of a ridge (limestone) and I circle several times, all the while scratching my balding pate. About 3 miles away, I find another ridge with a relatively flat spot on it, which looks long enough to settle the 'Cub into. I make several passes, each time getting a bit lower and slower. I finally pull full flaps and set the thing down. Turns out it was plenty of room, although I remember heating up the brakes a bit to get stopped. I spent about 4 hours that summer afternoon walking to that black hole in the top of the ridge. It was indeed a sink-hole. I dropped several rocks into the abyss, listening to them bounce and careen off the sides to the bottom of the nearly-bottomless pit. It was precisely on the top of the ridge, thus had a well-worn caribou/bear trail wending its way around the 6-8-ft opening. Cool, me-thinks! I wondered how many caribou, grizzlies, wolverine, etc., had fallen into that pitfall trap over the past 10,000 years. Always wanted to get back there with climbing gear and go exploring. Alas, I never did. Instead, I told a University of Alaska-Fairbanks archaeologist about the place; even showed him on a map precisely where it was. Couple years later, I was in Fairbanks showing him various Pleistocene bones I'd picked up on various Kuskokwim or Yukon river bars, and he told me a story about him and two grad students taking a helicopter into that "secret" place, along with good headlamps, hardhats, and lots of rope. Then he brought out a box. In the box was, you guessed it, a complete skull of a cave bear. He said there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of caribou carcasses, along with a wide variety of other bones, most probably from 200 to 20,000 years ago. He said they were going to return and fully catalog this "bonanza", but thus far hadn't found any camels, superbison, sabre-toothed cats, or mega-moose. So, to end the story, why would anyone be so stupid as to tell someone else about something like that?

It will be interesting to follow that story of the Rooski cave bear and figure out if it really is a cave bear, a short-faced bear, or a modern brown bear. Reminds me of a book, "Alaskan-Yukon Trophies Won and Lost" (Orville Young, 1947).

Jack

Jack, Did you ever go down in those caves in the Lime Hills ??


I thought your story was going to end with....................."after I climbed back up out of the sink hole, I saw that my Cub had blown off the ridgeline 3 miles away !"


That bear's teeth look to be in pretty good shape.

Amazing experience, Jack ....that must have driven you near crazy thinking on what treasures awaited in that sinkhole...It sure would for me to this day !

I too wondered how anything as mind-blowing as that find could be kept quiet, and only told to the right people . Sure wished you could have been the one they wanted to explore that find. You might still be there to this day

Gulo. Thanks great story

Cool thread, Ken.

Those Clan of the Cave Bear books are readable, if you ignore the blatant feminism and misinformation.

We now know, for instance, that homo sapiens sapiens could and did interbreed with Neanderthals. The author of the Cave Bear series guessed wrong on a crucial point in her plot.

Jim

The Clan of the Cave Bear series of books are works of fiction, not documentaries.

I also have all the clan of the cave bear books. Wish there were more of them, fun reading. Mike

Been observing some photos of cave bear skulls ...they seem like the canines are slanted out farther forward than on modern big bears...also the cranial slant into the bridge of the nose seems more abrupt.

So interesting to read their molars were different than modern bears, in that they were more herbivore oriented in general.

Please excuse my lack of proper terms, Jack....I have been an enthusiastic natural-born biologist without the formal education as such. I still appreciate with just as much enthusiasm the natural world in observation and learning . Behavior as well as anatomically . My art has depended on that natural touch of interest.

None of the art renditions of cave bears that I have seen are exciting for me at all....unfortunately.

If only there are real life video of that time , and the other animals and humans who interacted with them all later....

Are you a Glass half empty guy? LOL!