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Climate Fact Of The Day – Hardy polar bears have survived past global warming
New Scientist – POLAR bears have patrolled the planet’s icy regions for millions of years longer than previously thought – riding out several episodes of global warming in that time. Charlotte Lindqvist of the University at Buffalo, New York, and an international team of researchers have just completed the most comprehensive analysis yet of the polar bear genome. The team looked at DNA from 23 living polar bears and a 110,000-year-old polar bear jawbone. Aided by comparisons with the genomes of brown and black bears, they found that polar bears first emerged as a separate species between 4 and 5 million years ago. Previous studies had suggested the species didn’t diverge from brown bears until much later – perhaps just 600,000 years ago. Read Article
Tags: Arctic Antarctica, climate, history