At 3.5 meters long and with a shoulder height of 1.7 meters, the cave bear was one of the giants of the Ice Age. Yet few appear to have survived until the last glacial maximum 24,000 to 19,000 years ago. Researchers from Germany, Italy and Canada have conducted analyses to find out what likely caused the extinction of these large herbivores. It is believed that the renewed cooling of the climate and hunting by humans ‒ added to the bears’ purely vegetarian diet ‒ increased the pressure on this megafauna species. Professor Hervé Bocherens of the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen took part in the study, which examined cave bear bones using the latest methods. The results of the study have been published in Historical Biology.