Could introducing polar bears to Antarctica save the species from extinction?
It is a common misconception that polar bears roam the world’s southernmost continent, to the frustration of many scientists. Given the similarities between Antarctica and the real home of polar bears, the Arctic, this confusion is quite understandable. So why is it that polar bears are only found near the North Pole? It Started With Pangea Millions of years ago, Earth’s continents sat together as a single super-continent: Pangea. Animals of the time could travel across landscapes which are now separated by massive oceans. But when Pangea broke apart about 200 million years ago, this level of animal mixing came to a halt. It just so happened that the ancestor of today’s polar bears ended up on the continental slices that became Europe, Asia, and North America. These ancestors gave rise to North America’s brown bears 1.4 million years ago, well after Pangea broke apat. It wasn’t for another 1 million years that an albino version of the brown bear evolved and began to thrive in the Arctic, making the polar bear a relatively recently-evolved animal in Earth’s long history. Antarctica was once a part of the Pangea supercontinent, too, before slowly drifting south. But unlike the pieces that went north, no bear ancestors were along for the ride south – or at least, no ancestor able to survive the harsh Antarctic climate. Conservation Through Re-Location? Thanks to wildlife photographers like Paul Nicklen and Cristina “Mitty” Mittermeier, the plight of the Arctic’s polar bears has captured global attention.
