The Ineiskaya cave, in the Russian republic of Khakassia, stored 400 kg of animal bones from 42,000 years ago eaten by hyenas, which provides abundant material on the fauna of that time.
Scientists from the Ural Federal University in Russia have discovered a large den of ancient cave hyenas in the Republic of Khakassia in southern Siberia.
It is the largest known in Asia, and in it the researchers collected around 400 kg of bones from other animals dating back 42,000 years, reports the university website.
The discovery took place in the Ineiskaya cave. Studying the den will allow us to better understand the lifestyle of extinct predators, in particular, what they ate and how they cared for their young, as well as the climate of that time. The scientists managed to find two intact skulls of cave hyenas (‘Crocuta crocuta spelaea’), something very rare.
The cave is also unique in that the bones it contains are on the surface (no digging was necessary to access them) and have been preserved intact, plus some of them are inside the ice. Finds include large animals such as mammoths, Merck and woolly rhinos, woolly bison, yaks, noble and northern giant deer, and gazelles.
Predators are represented by ancestral remains of the brown bear, fox, and wolf. Rodents include marmots and other small animals that have yet to be identified. The scientists also found remains of frogs, toads, birds and fish, according to Dmitry Malikov, a senior researcher at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
By studying the remains of the Merck rhinoceros, the scientists established the dating of the finds: 42,000 years.
Bite marks are visible on the bones of large animals. Some of the skeletons are arranged in the correct anatomical order, indicating that the hyenas dragged parts of their bodies into the cave.
In addition, a large number of cub bones were found, such as the skull of a young hyena, many lower jaws and milk teeth.
Source: RT
