“Our interpretation is that the claws were attached to the skin of the lion,” Dr. Camarós said. “You know those horrible carpets which people have in their house, the bear carpets with the claws and head? This would be very similar but without the head, just the claws and the pelt.”

He thinks that the prehistoric people may have skinned cave lions with their claws intact, and either placed the pelts over huts to make a tent or laid them on the floor. Then, after thousands of years the skin and fur disintegrated, leaving behind only the fossilized claw bones.

To support their hypothesis the team points to markings they found on the claws. Each claw has a similar pattern of scrapes and scratches that seemed to have been made by human tools. The patterns led the team to believe that the early humans were well acquainted with the lion’s anatomy and knew exactly where to cut to sever the skin from the tendons and ligaments.

Though the researchers are not sure how this cave lion died, Dr. Camarós thinks it was hunted by early humans. He said that the findings strengthen the idea that humans hunted cave lions, and he speculated that humans should potentially be considered as a possible factor in the species’ extinction, around 14,000 years ago.