*** The icon of the Arctic, the polar bear, is the ultimate survivor in one of the harshest areas on Earth. Reigning over a world of ice, tundra, and snow, this carnivore would seem to have a lineage that traces back to some mammoth creature of the icy regions.
But in fact, the polar bear’s closest ancestor is a land carnivore we associate more strongly with our forests. Over the years, scientists have uncovered an evolutionary path suggesting that polar bears are a relatively new species, and actually a subspecies, of Ursus arctos, more widely known as the brown bear. Scientific evidence has found that the brown bear, a species that also includes grizzly bears, was a “precursor” to polar bears, which then went on to develop specializations for inhabiting the harsh Arctic.
