Excerpts: from the Sunday Times: Polar bear is a ‘new’ species
by Jonathan Leake
Polar bears may have come into existence only 150,000 years ago, when trapped brown bears had to adapt to an ice age
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 paper they said: “Brown bears of the ABC islands may be descendants of ancient ursids [bears] that diverged from other lineages of brown bears and subsequently founded the polar bear lineage.” This view is expected to get support from new research, out this week, based on DNA extracted from the Poolepynten jawbone.
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. Professor Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, an expert in ice ages, said: “Early polar bears would not have had all the specialisations of modern animals and we know nothing about their behaviour.
“Living through a warm period back then does not mean they are resilient to climate change now.”
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All species are migratory unless their wings or legs fall off. A polar bear can live in a forest, on an ice sheet, up a mountain, on a beach or in a zoo in Germany. They are not reliant on freezing weather. They’ll live wherever their needs take them or where they can smell meat.
Maybe the species that use the same space as man or compete for the the same resourses as mankind may suffer, but the ones that live beyond the edge of normal existance, they will be around for as long as they want to
I guess that would be global warming as opposed to Global Warming.
Polar bears thrive in tropical climates, like the mysterious island on Lost.
42125 (11:22:36) :
Actually a lot of Polar Bear evolution seems to have occurred during the present warm interglacial (c. 12,000 years). The Late Pleistocene form Ursus maritimus tyrannus was appreciably larger and in some aspects more similar to the Brown Bear than the modern subspecies (Kurtén, B. 1964 The evolution of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus), Acta Zool Fenn 108, pp. 1–30).
Let’s hope that this evolution haven’t made them unable to cope with the next ice-age…..
Two scientists from Iceland and Norway make a finding and publish a paper. It involves polar bears and so has some bearing (heh heh) on Al Gore’s Incredible Boiling Planet Hoax.
So the UK Times sends Johnny Leaky out on a hunt through the pucker brush to find somebody, anybody, that can shoot a hole in the science. They flush out some nobody named Chris Stringer who does not study polar bears but is willing to spout hysterical nonsense that appears to contradict the findings of the real scientists.
And the MSM wonders why everybody hates them so, and why they going broke in a New York minute.
Meanwhile the climate alarmist pseudoscientists are in the hotseat on trial for fraud and collusion in science thuggery. The UN and global governators are drowning in the backwash.
The mess these people have made is going to take years to clean up. We need shovel brigades and a fleet of dump trucks to haul the manure away.
So uh just to go with my own jerky point of view, the Polar bear is a relic of the Ice age, whose continued existence is no more guaranteed than were the wooly Mammoth, Sabre tooth tiger or Giant Sloth.
Jimbo (11:28:45) :
‘”I don’t think there is any question polar bears are in danger from global warming,” said Andrew Derocher of the World Conservation Union, and a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “People who deny that have a clear interest in hunting bears.”‘
I guess I must have a clear interest in hunting bears. First I knew of it. Derocher: ever considered that they just might not agree with your questionable assertion?
“Polar bear experts said that numbers had increased not because of climate change but due to the efforts of conservationists”
I guess alarmists will tell us that those efforts are serving to “hide the decline”?
Ipso de facto exacto Iditerod!
Anyone who thinks a polar bear is a delicate flower, a veritable hothouse violet of the animal world… Well, hell, what do I know?
I’m willing to concede that Gore, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Obama et al are my protectors. My question is: Who in the hell is going to protect me from my protectors?
Fred from Canuckistan (09:55:53) :
‘“150,000 years ago, when brown bears were trapped by an ice age ”
What??’
Yep, along with their food source. Seals
tty,
Here is the rest of the paragraph:
“Only pregnant female bears enter a den. They do so in the fall and give birth to their cubs in November or December. The bear family will remain in the den until March or April.”
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/faq/#q15
While technically suppose it’s OT on this thread, it really DOES fit so well under the title of this thread: UN-Bearable:
Al Gore finally comes out of ”hibernation” (at least momentarily), with a major NYT Op-Ed piece titled ”We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html
Not only un-bearable: UNBELIEVABLE. . . .
Apparently Reverend Gore thinks his AGW acolytes can still fool all of the people all of the time.
Earth to Al: The jig’s up. . . .
“Living through a warm period back then does not mean they are resilient to climate change now.”
I love how they must put that caveat in there. Just because they survived an interglacial much warmer than today’s interglacial does not mean they will survive this one.
Scientists have known that the polar bear is a recent adaptation of the brown bear for decades. There is really nothing new here. And over the past couple of million years there might have been several different “polar” bear species that have appeared and disappeared.
For example, say you have a species is trapped during a glaciation. They become cold-adapted, maybe even developing a white coat. Now imagine that the species they adapted from disappears. Now there is an interglacial. The cold adaptations of the new “polar” species don’t give it any advantage in the warm climate. The white coat maybe even making it more visible to prey. So maybe the “polar” adapted species disappears. Then along comes the next glaciation. Maybe this time there is no such species that is “trapped” and no “polar” adapted species emerges.
The point is that there could possibly have been several different polar adapted bear species over the past few million years that have appeared and disappeared.
I guess the new Pen “arctic explorers” will find out about the bears and all this next season when they take off on another exciting adventure.Stay tuned.
In other news’ a giant head was found in Egypt. Another giant swelled head (GORE) was just published in the NY Times where he talked about only 2 mistakes in the IPCC report.
42125 (11:22:36) :
“.. but it does not logically follow from this discovery so long as the initial assumption of further specialization is sound.”
And we determine this specialization from a jawbone how?
Seems like a crock, what specialisation did the have before? they adapt to people fine, whatever happens I would say an increase in ice cover, after the food is out of reach, would make their life very hard, that would only happen if we had cooling so the warmists can never consider that.
I have always thought that the plight of the polar bears was one of the over hyped scare stories put out by the AGW lobby. Even a cursory consideration of history suggests that there was no sustance in the scare story. Even if the MWP and RWP were not a global events but limited to the northern hemishpere (a matter of much conjecture and even Phil Jones indicates that they might have been global), it is obvious that a warmer northern hemishpere is not a problem for the polar bear. Nature has a natural instinct for survival/adaption and the polar bears survived both of these periods and there is therefore no reason to presume that they will not once more survive a 2-4C warmer northern hemishpere 9should it so warm).
It’s interesting that while the polar bear population rose from 5,000 to 20,000+ in about 55 years, the seals they chow down on also rose from a population of about 2-3 million to around 10-12 million in about the same period. Despite the fact that a polar bear needs to each chomp down a seal every 8 days, or about 1 million seals a year for 20,000+ polar bears. (The reason that both populations are rising? Simple – reduced hunting/culling of both starting in the 60’s and 70’s.)
Frankly, I like seals more than I like polar bears. Seals are sorta cuddly and smart. They aren’t cannibalistic like polar bears. Seals don’t annually eviscerate 1 million adult and cute baby seals like polar bears do. A human family can get kinda close to many seals and the worst that happens is that the seals spook and swim away. A human family approaching a polar bear to share a Coke will end up with severe longevity issues after the encounter.
So if the polar bear populations do get a little stressed from global warming, I’ll be rooting for those seals that avoided ending up polar bear buffets. And maybe, just maybe, my family will see those seals at the beach as we have before. And they might, just might, thank us. You never know.
42125 (11:22:36) :
It appears to me that Stringer is correct. If it is true that early polar bears do not have the specializations of modern polar bears, then it would be erroneous to conclude on the basis of this discovery that the modern polar bear could survive in a warm climate like the one that existed between 115,000 and 130,000 BP.
I can’t see how broad paws and breath-holding ability are going to hurt a polar bear’s ability to rummage a landfill. Bears of any flavor aren’t picky eaters. You’ll see the evolution of Ursus dumpus in a Nanook minute.
If they want seals, they’ll follow the seals. The seals need ice to haul out on, and if the ice is gone, they’ll haul out on land, which is bad for seals and good for bears.
At the current rate of extinction, there will only be a million polar bears left by 2160.
As always the “don’t punish me I am faithful” disclaimer: “Living through a warm period back then does not mean they are resilient to climate change now.”
This stupid homage paying to pc and funding concerns is just so annoying.
The worst issue is sea-level rising.
First of all, there is none.
And why isnt there one?
Because there is no global warming.
And then if there was a rise of sea-levels, Im sure all mammals would manage to outrun, say, 0.2 deg per century…..
Craig Moore (11:47:40) : “Just wait to they find the “jawbone of an ass” to slay all you denialists! ;~p ”
Al Gore isn’t through with it yet.
“Al Gore’s Holy Hologram (12:14:42) :
[…]
A polar bear can live in a forest, on an ice sheet, up a mountain, on a beach or in a zoo in Germany.”
Affirmative. Next polar bear 60 km from me in the zoo in Hanover.
Monique, I don’t know enough to offer an opinion on the interesting questions you ask. I simply meant to judge Stringer’s statement in context. One news story already omits a part of the argument that he made explicit, namely the assumption of further specialization.
tty, hopefully they’ll just move to a lower–no, wait, *I* live at a lower latitude!
Keep in mind that with the scarcity of polar bear fossils (only six in total prior to the Holocene era), one of the things we don’t know is how small polar bear populations may have gotten during EITHER warmer or colder periods.
There is an assumption that a drop below a certain number of individuals dooms the species to extinction – and that we know what that number actually is.
What we DO know is that despite climate change over the last 100,000 years, polar bears as a species survived well enough for numbers to attain present levels. We DO NOT know how small the population became, whether arctic climate was warmer or colder.
PS. note that the previous “oldest known polar bear fossil” found around Kent in England is now considered to have been re-classified as a brown bear by someone at the British Museum. Curiously, that reassignment has not been formally published, despite the importance of this specimen to our understanding of polar bear evolution.