All living polar bears are Irish

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Researchers find polar bears

all over the world are related maternally

to extinct Irish brown bears

An international team of researchers has linked the ancestry of every polar bear in the world to the skeletal remains of an extinct species of brown bear from Ireland. The new research has been reported in the latest edition of Current Biology.

polar bears are irish all over the worldPatrick the Polar Bear

Previously, it was believed that today’s polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska.

However, analysis of mitochondrial DNA – which is passed from mother to child – has shown the extinct Irish brown bears are the ancestors of all today’s polar bears.

The finding, the researchers say, sheds important new light on the way bears adapted to habitat upheaval during the Ice Age and on how present-day climate change could also lead to more inter-species breeding — examples of which are already being observed in Canada, where grizzly-polar bear hybrids have been reported in recent years.
 

Polar bears and “opportunistic” mating

Among the 18-member research team were: Prof Daniel Bradley, of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and Dr Ceiridwen Edwards, formerly of TCD and now at Oxford University, collaborated with Prof Beth Shapiro, of Pennsylvania State University, in the study.

The scientists concluded that “opportunistic mating” between polar bears and brown bears may have occurred regularly in Ireland and Great Britain during the ebb and flow of glaciers that occurred before the end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago.

“Today, the Arctic climate is again changing rapidly, and the habitat of brown and polar bears is once again beginning to overlap, providing the opportunity for the two species to hybridize,” the team notes in the Current Biology paper, adding that conservation measures aimed at protecting the polar bear should pay special attention to the role hybrids may play in the species’ survival over time.

“It may be appropriate to reconsider protection of hybrids, as they may play an under appreciated role in the survival of species,” the researchers state. “Our results suggest that, although the genetic mixing observed in bears today may be an important component of the long-term evolution of the polar bear, brown and polar bears have remained evolutionarily distinct lineages over geological time, suggesting that they are likely to remain as such in the future.”

So, polar bears are Irish, what next, penguins are from Florida?

polar bears are irish in canadaTwo Irish Polar Bears walked into a bar . . .


About Post Author

Holte Ender

Holte Ender will always try to see your point of view, but sometimes it is hard to stick his head that far up his @$$.
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12 years ago

Feckin’ bears.

lazersedge
12 years ago

Yes. In fact, I will have a couple. This could be a long match, Holte.

Admin
12 years ago

Go bears!! What a great read.

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