Apparently the brainiacs who preach natural selection have no clue how polar bears got their white coat.
Polar Bears Turning Brown? Climate Change Might Make It Happen, Scientists Say.
How polar bears got their white coat remains a scientific mystery, but newly published research suggests a way they could turn brown again.
One of the study's authors says that's what might eventually happen to some groups of modern bears as climate change alters their habitat.
"It's not something that happened in the past and might happen in the future â it's happening today," said Beth Shapiro, one of the authors of the study published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
Shapiro and her colleagues were looking for insight into the evolutionary past of bears. The researchers were trying to understand when black, brown and polar bears diverged from each other and developed their modern appearance.
Scientists still don't know when polar bears acquired their distinctive coat. The oldest remains only date from about 110,000 years ago, by which time the species was already well-developed.
"This 110,000-year-old bone probably isn't the earliest polar bear," said Shapiro. "We have no idea how early polar bears diverged from brown bears."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/14/polar-bears-turn-brown-climate-change_n_2878684.html
Polar Bears Turning Brown? Climate Change Might Make It Happen, Scientists Say.
How polar bears got their white coat remains a scientific mystery, but newly published research suggests a way they could turn brown again.
One of the study's authors says that's what might eventually happen to some groups of modern bears as climate change alters their habitat.
"It's not something that happened in the past and might happen in the future â it's happening today," said Beth Shapiro, one of the authors of the study published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
Shapiro and her colleagues were looking for insight into the evolutionary past of bears. The researchers were trying to understand when black, brown and polar bears diverged from each other and developed their modern appearance.
Scientists still don't know when polar bears acquired their distinctive coat. The oldest remains only date from about 110,000 years ago, by which time the species was already well-developed.
"This 110,000-year-old bone probably isn't the earliest polar bear," said Shapiro. "We have no idea how early polar bears diverged from brown bears."
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/14/polar-bears-turn-brown-climate-change_n_2878684.html
