The assessment of the internal architecture of an MIS 3 cave bear bone assemblage. Case study: Urşilor Cave, Western Carpathians, Romania

Abstract

Urşilor Cave is one of the most complex MIS 3 cave bear settlements of Europe: it incorporates a large number of cave bears' palaeoichnofabrics (bioglyphs: nests, footprints, scratch marks, fur imprints, etc.) and several bone assemblages of different age and genesis. This study has the aim of analyzing the spatial orientation and the internal architecture of the bone assemblage from the excavation chamber of the scientific reserve (lower level of the cave) in order to assess the environmental conditions of the bone deposition. As such, almost 580 long bones were analyzed for spatial orientation, and almost 100 plates of bone levels were documented at every 10cm of depth (mapped, photographed and topographed). The obtained results point to an in situ thanatocoenosis (typical for cave traps) and reveal the taphonomic conditions at the time of the bone layers' deposition. Moreover, the taphonomic approach helped us to better understand the obtained radiocarbon data (on cave bear fossils)—which previously indicated a non-concordance with the stratigraphy—and to perform a taphonomic model for the bone’ deposition from the excavation chamber. Moreover, we report here the discovery of two fossil carnivore skeletons (a cave bear and a cave lion), one of the best preserved and anatomically connected, documented in such environments.