Ancestry of Polar Bears Traced to Ireland

www.sciencedaily.com...

An international team of scientists has discovered that the female ancestor of all living polar bears was a brown bear that lived in the vicinity of present-day Britain and Ireland just prior to the peak of the last ice age -- 20,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Ireland? I thought they would of came from somewhere like Alaska, Siberia, or Canada.

Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State University and one of the team's leaders, explained that climate changes affecting the North Atlantic ice sheet probably gave rise to periodic overlaps in bear habitats. These overlaps then led to hybridization, or interbreeding -- an event that caused maternal DNA from brown bears to be introduced into polar bears.

Does the above mean that polar bears and brown bears got together back in the day and their DNA got intertwined together and there's a possibility that there's an even older ancestor?

Everything can be traced back to Ireland. We are the worlds greatest export. =)

So that's why the Irish grin and BEAR it,,,

Merlin,,,did you say collect the sperm and ovaries of a brown bear??,,,,,right,,, lol

reply to post by michaelmcclen


Except for money


Anyways back to the polar bears

Source

In 2006, a hunter found, and killed, a half-polar-half-grizzly hybrid — sometimes called a pizzly bear. In 2010 a Canadian hunter found, and killed, a hybrid, and in a 2010 report, researchers said they’ve spotted seven brown bears in the polar-bear-only Wapusk National Park.

Oh my a pizzly bear. Why would they hunt down something as rare as that?

reply to post by buni11687


I have heard of grolar bears, but never heard of brolar bears LOL.

Maybe we should bring some panda bears over there and let them repopulate with the Irish bears. Just joking

During the conquest of Briton by the romans , they called Ireland Hibernia because it was too cold to conquer lol so its possible