Bear evolution (separation from the common ancestor of bears and dogs) is fairly well understood and actually there is nothing really remarkable about the discovery. The age brackett of the fossil is fairly wide and nicely encompassed by the "fudge" area of discoveries of this kind. The interesting aspect is the knowledge that the purported Polar Bear survived a very warm interglacial episode (warmer than today's interglacial and there were no coal fired power plants). The discovers of the specimen will need to modify their remarks, of course, given the new publication of data that indicates that the polar ice has returned to within 1% of its known modern maximum area and that the Antarctic ice is increasing as well. But such is the fate of flawed climate change notions that confuse weather and climate and ignore the 4.7 billion year hostory of this planet.

Re Donald Wolberg: "given the new publication of data that indicates that the polar ice has returned to within 1% of its known modern maximum area..."

But no where near within 1% of its known modern maximum average thickness, which would take several successive favorable winters and summers to achieve. Last week the entire Arctic was as much as 20� above "normal" for this time of year, which hardly bodes well for that. Nor does the long-term trend in annual extent of melt and refreeze, nor in dates of freeze up and thaw. It's the long term trend that constitutes climate, after all.

It's a bitch when reality does not match belief and wishful thoughts about climate change.

Oh, you might want to take a closer look at the 4.7 billion year hostory of this planet. It contains numerous events that may be instructive as to how rapidly and how severely climate can change once tipping points are reached.

"Modern" maximum is an artifact of records and likely as old as "I Love Lucy" with any accuracy. The 1939-1945 interval is "modern" but poorly documented for the region. However, given the likely extent of the cold interval, there was a major extension of ice in the northern hemisphere. This was fortunate in some sense since it had a major impact on Hitler's Panzers heading East, and likely slowed the advance at the Bulge. Interestingly it also is the period of a major up-tick in CO2--colder, not warmer.

Indeed, catastrophic climate collapse seems to be evidenced in the recors. The collapse of atmospheric oxygen about 240 million years ago coincides roughly with the mother of all extinctions when perhaps 90% of everything alive died. Then too at only 8-10,000 years BP, all that ice melted and sealevels rose 100 meters (320 feet) and without cars or coal fired power plants of Al Gore to tell us why.