show Abstracthide AbstractThis study involves shotgun sequencing data from ancient and modern ursine bears. Included are: 4 Late Pleistocene cave bears (Ursus spelaeus complex) representing the taxa spelaeus, ingressus, eremus and kudarensis; 1 Late pleistocene brown bear (Ursus arctos) from Austria; and 3 modern brown bears (U. arctos) from Georgia, Slovenia and Russia. Please note these data were generated using a variety of DNA extraction and library preparation procedures, with the latter involving different adapter oligos. The ancient datasets also contain a mixture of ursid (endogenous) sequences plus those from environmental (exogenous) contaminants. Full details can be found in the Supplementary Information of the associated publication