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ANCIENT Neanderthals may have ambushed huge bears just as they were waking from hibernation 鈥� then stolen their caves.

鈥淭hese cave bears were hunted and butchered by Neanderthals,鈥� says lead author at the University of Ferrara, Italy.

Peresani and his colleagues have excavated the Rio Secco and Fumane caves in northern Italy. They have analysed more than 1,700 bones, most of which belong to about 50 cave bears that lived 50,000 to 43,000 years ago.

Cave bears dominated Europe during the last ice age but are now extinct. Comparable to grizzly bears, they could weigh over 600 kilograms. 鈥淚 think they were the most dangerous mammals in the Ice Age period,鈥� says Peresani.

Neanderthals and cave bears would have met often, he says, as they competed for the same caves. And it seems the Neanderthals were able to take the bears down.

Pelts and meat

There were cut marks on the bones and hundreds of stone tools in the caves. Certain bones had bite marks matching Neanderthal teeth, and some may have been cooked. Some long bones seem to have been banged about, perhaps to extract the tasty marrow inside.

The Neanderthals were likely mostly after the bears鈥� pelts, says Peresani. However, bear meat would have been a nice change from the ibex and birds they normally hunted.

The bears included adults, cubs and newborns. That is key, since many bears give birth to cubs near the end of winter as they come out of hibernation. Neanderthals must have targeted the bears just as they came out of hibernation, says Peresani. The females, while massive, would have been weak after birth and hibernation.

Bear penis bones were also found in one cave, suggesting that the Neanderthals did sometimes tackle adult males as well.

The Neanderthals likely came to these caves in spring, heading up from Italy鈥檚 plains to get stones for tool-making. Once they had killed a cave鈥檚 bear, they may have used the cave for months. 鈥淭hey were nomads,鈥� says Peresani. 鈥淭hey knew the landscape very well and the resources available based on the seasons.鈥�

Battles over territory

of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism in Florence recently showed that Neanderthals in Tuscany may have used fire to fashion tools. She says the research is very carefully done.

As well as the bear remains, the team found teeth from a hominin baby in one of the caves. Perhaps a Neanderthal child lost their first teeth while chewing bear flesh.

Peresani hopes to extract DNA from the teeth. The DNA could tell us more about how Neanderthal genes equipped them to survive the ice age, and whether humans and Neanderthals interbred at this stage of history.

The vast numbers of cave bear bones imply that Neanderthals often succeeded in killing the animals. However, the bears outlasted them. The last reliably dated remains of Neanderthals are from 40,000 years ago, suggesting they died out just a few thousand years after the most recent cave remains. However, cave bears lasted another 20,000 years before going extinct.