Brown bear skull fossil (Ursus arctos deningeri) (Reichenau)

This 700,000 year old skull of a now extinct bear Ursus deningeri or ‘Deninger’s Bear’ was found in the Cromer Forest Bed deposit at Keswick gap, Bacton in Norfolk. This species lived during the Pleistocene period which stretched from around 2.6million years ago to just 11.7 thousand years ago. It is considered to be a close relation to modern brown bears with whom it shares a slim mandible but also shares features with extinct cave bear species. They were mainly vegetarian and used caves for hibernation over winter. The Pleistocene Epoch is the time which saw the evolution of more modern humans such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus. This bear may also have shared its habitat with other now extinct species such as the famous Steppe Mammoth found at West Runton in Norfolk in 1990.