.. and could occupy our time persecuting dissenters, we learn from CBC News (July 7, 2011),
A female grizzly bear who lived in Ireland less than 50,000 years ago was an ancestor of all modern polar bears, suggesting “grolar” hybrids were an important part of polar bear history.The unexpected DNA evidence suggests that interbreeding between polar bears and brown bears — usually known as grizzly bears in North America — is not unusual at times when climate change caused the range of the two species to overlap, such as around the beginning of the last ice age.
– “Polar bears had Irish grizzly ancestor”
Yes, the grolar bear (grizzly +polar) is real, including second generation hybrids.
What was interesting was that the sequences from our brown bears were closer to modern polar bears than those ancient polar bears were,” he said in a phone interview Thursday.
In fact, the results, which Bradley said were unexpected, suggest that all polar bears share a female Irish brown bear ancestor from within the last 50,000 to 20,000 years — not that long ago on the evolutionary time-scale.
If so, that cow bear could sure swim. And brown bears do the same thing.
Is speciation all it’s cracked up to be? Wasn’t it predicted that they’d all be more separate than this?