Family Ursidae Rank Species | Phylum Chordata Genus Ursus | |
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Similar Bears, Ursus etruscus, Carnivores, Ursus minimus, Ursus dolinensis | ||
Ursus deningeri (Deninger's bear) is an extinct species of mammal of the family Ursidae (bears), endemic to Eurasia during the Pleistocene for approximately 1.7 million years, from ~1.8 Mya to 100,000 years ago.
Contents
The range of this bear has been found to encompass both Europe and Asia, demonstrating the ability of the species to adapt to many Pleistocene environments.
U. deningeri is a descendant of U. savini and an ancestor of U. spelaeus.
Morphology
Ursus deningeri has a combination of primitive and derived characters that distinguishes it from all other Pleistocene bears. Its mandible is slender like that of living brown bears and Ursus etruscus. It also has derived characters of cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) and is considered to be the descendant of Ursus savini and very close to the common ancestor of brown bears.
Fossil distribution
Sites and specimen ages:
Genetics
In 2013, a German team reconstructed the mitochondrial genome of an Ursus deningeri more than 300,000 years old, proving that authentic ancient DNA can be preserved for hundreds of thousand years outside of permafrost.