A WEASEL BEAR’S SKULL?

According to the traditional legends and lore of native hunters in Arctic Canada, in addition to the normal polar bear there is a very special variety that is much bigger, but narrow-bodied, and fleeter-footed. They call it the tiriarnaq or tigiaqpak, names that translate as the weasel bear, on account of its lithe build and speedy pace. Although scientists working in this region have known about the local hunters’ belief in the weasel bear, they always dismissed it as mythical – until the recent public revelation that in 2014 a discovery was made here of a very unusual zoological specimen that may just conceivably represent tangible evidence for the weasel bear’s reality. Approximately 650-800 years old and thus earning for its erstwhile owner the nickname ‘The Old One’, the specimen was recovered from an eroding archæological site southwest of Utqiagvik, Alaska. It consisted of an exceptionally large, fully intact, but very odd-shaped polar bear skull, noticeably different from modern polar bear skulls. Despite its huge size, it was slender, elongated at the rear end, and exhibited unusual structural features around the nasal area and elsewhere. The significance of its distinctive appearance will require genetic and detailed morphological analyses before any answers are forthcoming. As noted by Anne Jensen, an Utqiagvik-based archæologist working for the science department of the Native village corporation UIC (Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corp.) who has been leading excavation and research programmes in the region, ‘The Old One’ may have belonged to a subspecies, or a different genetic ‘race’, of polar bear – or was possibly something else entirely. In view of its skull’s narrow form, might this “something else entirely” have been the legendary weasel bear? www.adn.com/arctic/2017/02/19/could-a-giantpolar-bear-skull-found-at-an-eroding-alaskaarchaeological-site-be-the-legendary-weaselbear/ 21 Feb 2017.