Ursus Etruscus

I'm watching Werner Herzog's documentary about cave art in the Chauvet Cave of southern France, The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. There's a bit about cave bears in the film, so I looked around some and found out about he Etruscan bear. This bear lived from about 5.3 million years ago up to about 11,000 years ago. It was on earth, living in North Africa, Europe, and out into the steppes, for five million years. Then it was gone. And one has to wonder why it died off, but not other large bears. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursus_etruscus