About the same time P. C. Schmerling of Liege was exploring the ossiferous caverns of the valley of the Meuse, and satisfied himself that the men whose bones he found beneath the stalagmite floors, together with bones cut and flints shaped by human workmanship, had inhabited this Belgian district at the same time with the cave-bear and several other extinct animals whose bones were imbedded with them (Recherches sur les ossements fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la province de Liege (Liege, 1833-1834)).
The epoch was characterized by cold wet climate, by the supposed existence of Man of the Olom type, that is, nearly as dolichocephalous as the Neanderthal type, but with superciliary ridges flat, and frontal bones high, and by the occurrence of the musk-ox, the horse, the cave-bear, Rhinoceros tichorhinus and the mammoth.
In 1893 the bones of a cave-bear (Ursus spelaeus) were taken from a cavern of the Bjelasnica range, in Herzegovina, a discovery without parallel in the Balkan Peninsula.
Those of the great cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), found abundantly in certain caverns of central Europe and Asia, show that it must have exceeded in size the polar bear of the present day.
