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Polar Bears Survived Previous Global Warming Periods
Polar bears may have come into existence only 150,000 years ago, when brown bears were trapped by an ice age and had to adapt quickly to survive, scientists have found.
The suggestion follows the discovery of the jawbone of an animal that died up to 130,000 years ago, making it the oldest polar bear fossil found. The bone has yielded new insights into the origins of Earth’s largest land predator.
One is the possibility that polar bears owe their existence not only to past climate change, including ice ages, but have also survived at least one long period of global warming.
The bone was discovered at Poolepynten on the Arctic island of Svalbard by Professors Olafur Ingolfsson, of the University of Iceland, and Oystein Wiig, of the University of Oslo.
In a research paper they concluded: “The Poolepynten subfossil mandible, which we argue is from a fully grown male, is probably the oldest polar bear find discovered so far. Its true age is interpreted to be 110,000-130,000 years old.”
It means polar bears have already survived a global warming that affected the northern hemisphere from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic ice cap were smaller than now.
Read more at Timesonline.co.uk: Polar bear is a ‘new’ species
CRN comment: Silly statement from Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who said, “Living through a warm period back then does not mean they are resilient to climate change now.” Hmmm! Doesn’t mean that they aren’t resilient either does it!? In fact they are only hypothetically endangered by computer modelling, not reality.
March 3rd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
It means polar bears have already survived a global warming that affected the northern hemisphere from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, when the Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic ice cap were smaller than now.
Human evolved as a unique species during that 15,000 year warm period that the poley’s bearly survived.
“The heat, oh the heat!” said our ancestry sitting around the campfire.
“I have an idea. Why don’t we shed this ape hair?”
“Ahhh. That’s better.”
The bic razer might have been our first great human invention. Made from bearskins and stone knives, of course.