(Photo by Nicholas Dale)Tim Stephens | June 16, 2022 | University of California, Santa Cruz
Study finds all brown bears today have some polar bear ancestry due to genetic admixture that occurred during a warm interglacial period more than 100,000 years ago
An analysis of ancient DNA from a 100,000-year-old polar bear has revealed that extensive hybridization between polar bears and brown bears occurred during the last warm interglacial period in the Pleistocene, leaving a surprising amount of polar bear ancestry in the genomes of all living brown bears. The study, led by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was published June 16 in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The researchers obtained ancient DNA from the skull of a juvenile polar bear that was found in 2009 on the coast of the Beaufort Sea in Arctic Alaska. Scientists nicknamed the bear ‘Bruno,’ although DNA analysis later showed it to be a female.
Read “100,000-year-old polar bear genome reveals ancient hybridization with brown bears“