Eurasian Brown Bear - Species Origin

Species Origin

Modern research has made it possible to track the origin of the subspecies. It is difficult to tell anything about the Eurasian brown bear, but the species to which it belongs might have developed about 5 million years ago. Researchers have also found that the Eurasian brown bear was separated about 850,000 years ago, one branch based in Western Europe and the other branch in Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. Through research of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) researchers have found that the European family has been divided into two subgroups, one in the Iberian peninsula and the other in the Balkans.

There are four major populations in Scandinavia, all with their core area in Sweden. By analyzing the mtDNA of the southern population researchers have found that they probably have come from populations in the Pyrenees in southern France and Spain and the Cantabrian Mountains (Spain). Bears from these populations spread to southern Scandinavia after the last ice age. The northern bear populations has its origin in the Finnish/Russian population. Their ancestors probably survived the ice age in the ice-free areas, west of the Ural mountains, and thereafter spread to Northern Europe.