{"id":17234,"date":"2026-07-01T12:10:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/?p=17234"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:10:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:10:51","slug":"success-story-brown-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/success-story-brown-bear\/","title":{"rendered":"Success Story Brown Bear: 3D Analysis Reveals the Secret of Their Climate Resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Munich, <\/em>2026-07-01
European brown bears are masters of survival: These animals have weathered Pleistocene climate fluctuations and survived the cycles of ice ages and interglacial periods to the present day. Zoologists have now investigated the origins of this evolutionary flexibility: 3D analyses of bear jaws show that certain chewing structures in the lower jaw of brown bears have apparently adapted very flexibly to changing climatic conditions. SNSB zoologist Anneke van Heteren has now published her findings in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown bears have lived in Europe for 175.000 years, right up to the present day. A new study now shows that, over the course of their evolution, the masticatory function of the lower jaws of European brown bears (Ursus arctos arctos<\/em>) changed significantly time and again and did so in sync with the climate, alternating between warm and cold periods. This is the conclusion reached by zoologist Anneke van Heteren of the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History (SNSB) and her colleague from the Universidad del Pa\u00eds Vasco, Donostia-San Sebasti\u00e1n. In their study, the two researchers compared the lower jaws of fossil and modern brown bears with those of their closest relatives, including two extinct cave bear species (Ursus spelaeus<\/em> and Ursus deningeri<\/em>) as well as polar bears (Ursus maritimus<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detailed geometric 3D analyses show that the basic jaw structurehas remained remarkably stable in European brown bears over thousands of years. In contrast to the specialized herbivorous cave bear or the carnivorous polar bear, the brown bear retained a versatile, omnivorous jaw structure. This has not changed drastically since the Pleistocene. The crucial flexibility, however, lies in the details: The researchers found subtle differences in lower jaw morphology in the area where the large chewing muscle, Musculus masseter, attaches. Here, the morphology of brown bears varies over the course of their evolution, depending on whether they lived during warm or cold climatic periods. The lower jaws of fossil brown bears from cold periods resemble those of modern bears native to cooler regions of the Northern Hemisphere and high-altitude areas. The jaws of fossil brown bears from warm periods, regardless of geological age, differ significantly from these. Apparently, changes in the available food supply for brown bears were reflected in the flexible adaptation of their masticatory musculature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis morphological flexibility of the masticatory structures in brown bears shows us that the animals were evidently able to adapt optimally to the selective demands of their environment. Their ability to cope with such extreme climatic fluctuations likely played a decisive role in their evolutionary success. Brown bears have been continuously present in Europe since the Middle Pleistocene. More specialized species, such as the cave bear, however, became extinct,\u201d explains Anneke van Heteren, curator of mammals at the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History (SNSB) and lead author of the study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publication:
<\/strong>van Heteren A. H. & Villalba de Alvarado M. 2026. \u2014 Functional morphology of Pleistocene and Holocene brown bears (Ursus arctos<\/em> Linnaeus, 1758): a 3D geometric morphometric approach to masseter biomechanics and evolutionary ecology. Comptes Rendus Palevol 25 (11): 189-205. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5852\/cr-palevol2026v25a11<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientific Contact:<\/strong>
PD Dr. Anneke van Heteren
SNSB \u2013 Zoologische Staatssammlung M\u00fcnchen
Tel.: 089 8107 125
E-Mail: vanheteren@snsb.de<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Unterkiefer
Lower jaws of fossil brown bears from the Le R\u00e9gourdou Cave, Dordogne, France, dating back 243,000 years, and from the Postes Cave, Extremadura, Spain, dating back 71,000\u2013104,000 years. The brown bear from the Postes Cave lived during a warmer interglacial period and had a shorter row of teeth than Ice Age brown bears, as well as a shorter lever arm for its masticatory muscles. (Photo: M\u00f3nica Villalba de Alvarado)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Sch\u00e4del
Lower jaw and skull bone of a Syrian brown bear Ursus arctos syriacus<\/em>, a subspecies of the brown bear adapted to warmer climates, from the paleoanatomical collection of the SNSB. (Photo: K. Hagemann, SNSB)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Unterkiefer
Lower jaw of a Syrian brown bear Ursus arctos syriacus<\/em>, a subspecies of the brown bear adapted to warmer climates from the paleoanatomical collection of the SNSB. (Photo: K. Hagemann, SNSB)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Sch\u00e4del
Skulls of brown bears from the SNSB\u2019s paleoanatomical collection. On the right is a Syrian brown bear Ursus arctos syriacus<\/em>, a subspecies adapted to warmer climates. (Photo: K. Hagemann, SNSB)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Munich, 2026-07-01 European brown bears are masters of survival: These animals have weathered Pleistocene climate fluctuations and survived the cycles of ice ages and interglacial periods to the present day. Zoologists have now investigated the origins of this evolutionary flexibility: 3D analyses of bear jaws show that certain chewing structures in the lower jaw of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17231,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-releases"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17234"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17319,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17234\/revisions\/17319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snsb.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}