Pleistocene Hyena Day: Visit Rotterdam Nature Museum

[Andre]

During the Pleistocene ice ages Europe was mostly a steppe area with large herds of megafauna like aurochs, horses and mammoths. That attracted predators like cave lions, sabertooth cats and the most powerful biter of all, the extinct European or spotted cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea).

If you'd happen to be around Rotterdam 24th of March, it might be interesting to visit the Nature History Museum for a session dedicated to this animal, the https://dl.dropbox.com/u/22026080/hyenadag%20poster.pdf .

I intend tol be there to greet you and I'll be happy to report here about the day.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

About time Hyena's get some attention. They are amazing animals!

 

[Andre]

I'll be happy to report here about the day.

Hmm It seems I have some promise to forfill. Sorry about the delay. Thanks for reminding

Anyway, it was a very good session. Although I'm not really deep into Paleontology, there were several amazing things in both Fosse's talks about Pleistocene predators, he showed impressive cave paintings that I had not seen before. Cave Hyenas also seemed to have hunted on cave lions, considering the big amount of lion bones with Hyena bite marks, but all found in caves, so it may well be that this is an artificiality of visiting the cave at the same time, where the animals were trapped. But it can also be scavaging.

Another very interesting thing was that cave lions were found high in caves in the French Alps up to 2500 meters height 8000 feet. Hyenas were not. So I thought if lions are there, there can't be a lot of ice. So I asked Fosse about dates of those cave lions. He had not done that research but he thought that all was beyond carbon dating except for one piece that was embedded in a speleothem, which could be dated to maybe 80-90KA BP with other techniques. But this would codate with the first Weichselian glaciation (fig 4). Although that was off the top of his head it definity warrants further investigation. Also interesting that cave lions never got to Northern Siberia.

The beach walk fossil hunt was interesting and we picked up the best area to find all kind of fauna remains. Interesting that the talker was a young student. There were several 'savant' kids around.

For me the talk of Bas van Geel was the main item. I had intense discussions with him about Siberian temperatures, before and after the event, as I drove him to the train station. He promised to introduce me to his academic friends to discuss my isotope work.