This is a tooth from a cave bear. My brother gave it to me some years ago and I keep it by my bedside, as a sort of link to the past and the world in which our ancestors lived.
The coin is to give an indication of scale. It's a Roman denarius, about 1 cm across.
The tooth looks pretty formidable, and I thought about what sort of a bite it could give. I imagined prehistoric people competing for cave space with what I though would have been carnivorous animals. However, to my surprise, studies of their teeth suggest they may have been substantially herbivorous [1].Why did they die out? Some possibilities suggest themselves:
- The bears' diet was too specialised (think about giant pandas), the plants they eat were affected by climate change and there wasn't enough food
- Humans hunted them to extinction
- Humans out-competed them.
[1] Cave Bear: A Vegetarian Carnivore, https://www.senckenberg.de/en/pressemeldungen/cave-bear-a-vegetarian-carnivore/#:~:text=Together%20with%20an%20international%20team,had%20an%20exclusively%20vegetarian%20diet.