Arctic Sea Ice 8000 Years Ago less Than Half Of Today’s, Yet Polar Bears Thrived!

One response to “Arctic Sea Ice 8000 Years Ago less Than Half Of Today’s, Yet Polar Bears Thrived!”

1. 
   tom0mason 16. June 2019 at 2:12 AM | Permalink

   From https://www.livescience.com/10956-polar-bears-evolved-150-000-years.html

   [A] jawbone find on the Norwegian island of Svalbard in 2004.
   …
   The jawbone, which is between 110,000 and 130,000 years old, provided the key to the polar bears’ past, because it offered a sample of genetic material. The researchers drilled into a tooth on the bone to extract mitochondrial DNA, which is DNA from the energy-producing part of the cell called mitochondria.
   …
   “We had to compare modern polar bears with this ancient polar bear and also the closest relatives of polar bears in order to reconstruct the family trees to understand their evolution,” Lindqvist told LiveScience. “Polar bears actually originated from within brown bears. We found that this ancient polar bear is positioned almost directly at the splitting point between polar bears and brown bears – very close to the common ancestor.”

   So Polar Bears have been around a while and must have experienced times of very low ice volumes before. They have survived this long why should they not go on surviving, they are after all intelligent, adaptable, and tough beasts.