Sentence examples for bears split from from inspiring English sources

Using molecular genetics, Matthew Cronin, a genetics professor at the University of Alaska, in Fairbanks, US determined that polar bears split from brown bears, and became an independent species, about 1.2 million years ago.

The barrier needn't be physical: When the polar bear split from the Grizzly bear about 300,000 years ago, for example, scientists think a change in climate drove them apart.

Polar bears split off from their closest relatives as recently as 150,000 years ago, an example of an evolutionary success story.

Drawing on that data, Willerslev and his colleagues conclude that polar bears split off from brown bears between 343,000 and 479,000 years ago.

The study also determined that Himalayan brown bears split off from the rest of the regional bear population several thousand years ago, making them genetically distinct from other brown bears.

To estimate a substitution rate based on the cave-brown bear split, five cave bear sequences covering the same mitochondrial fragment were obtained from GenBank and aligned with five randomly-selected brown bear sequences.

Our estimate is probably conservative; while the phylogeny that we used for rate estimates dates the polar bear/brown bear split at approximately 700 thousand years ago, recent analysis of sub-fossil polar bear remains suggests that polar bears diverged from brown bears as recently as 150 thousand years ago, and that the modern polar bear morphology was present by 130 thousand years ago.

Our estimate is probably conservative; while the phylogeny that we used for rate estimates dates the polar bear/brown bear split at ∼700 kya [3], recent analysis of sub-fossil polar bear remains suggests that polar bears diverged from brown bears as recently as 150 kya, and that the modern polar bear morphology was present by 130 kya [17].

What drove the evolution of polar bears is unclear, though the split from brown bears (dated at 343,000 479,000 years ago) coincides with a particularly warm 50,000-year interglacial period known as Marine Isotope Stage 11.

One study published in 2013 suggests that pandas split from the bears anything from 8 to 38 million years ago.

I also sought reactions from some polar bear specialists and biologists focused on DNA clues to when the species split from its brown bear kin.