"The new study looks at the "nuclear DNA" carried on the chromosomes in the cell nucleus. It is the latest in a series of genetic studies of polar bears published in recent years, each of which has prompted new ideas about the relationship between polar bears and brown bears. A 2010 study of fossils and mitochondrial DNA supported the idea that polar bears evolved from the ABC Islands brown bears. But a 2011 study of mitochondrial DNA from extinct Irish brown bears showed an even closer match to polar bears and suggested that polar bears got their mitochondrial DNA from hybridization with Irish bears. Shapiro, a coauthor of that study, said she now thinks the Irish brown bears may be another example of what happened in the ABC Islands, but she can't say for sure until she studies their nuclear DNA.
"In retrospect, I think we were wrong about the directionality of the gene flow between polar bears and Irish brown bears," she said.
Two studies published in 2012 sought to determine when the polar bear lineage diverged from the brown bear lineage using nuclear DNA data. The first, published in April in Science, put the split at 600,000 years ago and concluded that polar bears carry brown bear mitochondrial DNA due to past hybridizations. The second, published in July in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that brown bears, black bears, and polar bears diverged around 4 to 5 million years ago, followed by repeated episodes of hybridization between polar bears and brown bears.
The new study does not address the question of how long ago polar bears diverged from brown bears, but it may help sort out the conflicting results of recent studies. "It's a good step in the right direction of understanding what really happened," Shapiro said.""
