All polar bears from Ireland?
All polar bears came from Ireland, claim scientists who have revealed that the animals descended from a single female brown bear living in the European nation during last Ice Age, around 10,000 to 110,000 years ago.
An international team claims that although polar bears existed before that time having evolved from a different group of brown bears in Siberia 200,000 years ago, Irish bear is their earliest known common ancestor.
The scientists explained that climate changes affecting the North Atlantic ice sheet probably gave rise to periodic overlaps in bear habitats. These overlaps then led to hybridisation — an event that caused maternal DNA from brown bears to be introduced into polar bears. In their study, the scientists studied samples of DNA taken from the bones and teeth of 242 brown bears and polar bears, including modern animals and fossilised bears that lived 120,000 years ago.
The analysis found that the mitochondrial DNA of living polar bears closely matches the genetic material taken from female brown bears living in Ireland 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, the British media reported.
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