Perfectly preserved lion cubs that died 44,000 years ago

Most likely his death came when his mother left him inside a cave, went hunting and the cave rock collapsed, burying the cub.

‘We found visible traces of internal injuries which we believe could have been caused by rock falling on him’, Protopopov said.

‘The most important task of this complex research on the cave lion cubs is to restore their appearance.

‘It is still an enigma, in that on hundreds of published drawings of cave lions they are depicted without manes. Yet we notice spots and stripes of pigmentation in that area… which are not seen in modern day lions. So we are moving towards re-creating the way the cave lions looked.

‘Their living conditions were very different to modern lions in that cave lions lives in much colder climate and we believe therefore had to look different.

‘There was less prey in cold climate.

‘If we understand this question about mane we might get an idea of their social hierarchy - for example, we don’t know if they created prides with alpha males and several females alike to modern lions.’