New Evidence That Polar Bears Survived 1,600 Years of Ice-Free Summers in the Early Holocene
9th March 2025
Polar Bear Science. (I am not making this up.)
New evidence indicates that Arctic areas with the thickest ice today probably melted out every year during the summer for about 1,600 years during the early Holocene (ca. 11.3-9.7k years ago), making the Arctic virtually ice-free. As I argue in my new book, this means that polar bears and other Arctic species are capable of surviving extended periods with ice-free summers: otherwise, they would not be alive today.