The study is based on evaluation of existing finds of fossil polar bear bones and teeth previously reported from various sites around the Arctic Ocean and Scandinavia. The data show that there are no polar bear finds from the warmest part of the Holocene and the authors conclude that the polar bears must have survived in Siberian and Canadian refugia before again spreading through the Arctic as climate cooled.

The study was published in ‘Quaternary Science Reviews’ (Polar bear's range dynamics and survival in the Holocene - ScienceDirect)  and recently reported on in the journal ‘Physcis Today’.