Artist's notes

The cave lion (Panthera spelaea) roamed the mammoth steppe, where southern and northern wildlife met. Alongside predators like Arctic foxes, wolves, bears, lynxes, and wolverines, the cave lion hunted large animals such as tundra reindeer. Cave lions were slightly larger than modern lions, with thicker, greyer fur and no manes on the males. They inhabited Europe, Russia, China, and North America during the Ice Age. However, about 14,000 years ago, as the climate warmed and the mammoth steppe shrank, cave lions could no longer find enough prey and went extinct. Ice Age people both feared and admired cave lions, hunting them and using their hides and teeth for clothing and jewelry. Evidence of this admiration includes artwork like the 35,000-year-old mammoth bone sculpture of a lion-headed human.