Paw of Brown Bear nailed to the door of a Spanish Church is 400 years old

Paw of Brown Bear nailed to the door of a Spanish Church is 400 years old
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By h.b. - Dec 24, 2007 - 8:56 AM

The paw of the Brown Bear nailed to the church door in Navacepeda de Tormes - Photo EFE

Carbon dating has established the age of the paw on the door of the church in Navacepeda de Tormes in the Sierra de Gredos in Ávila

Carbon 14 dating has shown that the paw of a brown bear which was nailed to the door of a church at Navacepeda de Tormes in Ávila, is some 400 years old. The procedure has an error of +- 40 years. It’s thought the paw could have come from one of the last bears in the Sistema Central in Spain.

Details of the research on the paw have been published in the magazine ‘Molecular Ecology’ and were carried out by scientists from the Centre for the Evolution of Human Behaviour, led by Juan Luis Asuaga. They have been analysing the DNA of bears across Europe over the past 18,000 years which show that the animals survived the ice ages by moving south.

Ernest Hemmingway visited the area of the Sierra de Gredos in June 1931 and in a letter to his friend John Dos Passos, spoke of the bear paw nailed to the door of the church.
The origins of the paw are unknown however, although local legend says that a believer nailed the paw to the church door in thanks after surviving an attack from a bear.

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