Polar bears' past may echo their future, indicates a genetic study that finds the white-furred, sea ice-dwelling bears interbred with brown bears long after the two species separated as much as 5 million years ago.
Climate change likely drove this mixing among bears, writes the research team, noting there is evidence this is happening again.
"Maybe we're seeing a hint that in really warm times, polar bears changed their lifestyle and came into contact, and indeed interbred, with brown bears," said study researcher Stephan Schuster, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Pennsylvania State University, and a research scientist at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, in a statement.
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