research has made it possible to track the origin of the subspecies. The species to which it belongs developed more than 500,000 years ago, and researchers have found that the Eurasian brown bear separated about 850,000 years ago, with 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 divided into two clades—one in the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans, the other in Russia. There is a population in Scandinavia that includes bears of the western and eastern lineages. By analyzing the mtDNA of the southern population, researchers have found that they have probably 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 originate in the Finnish/Russian population. Probably their ancestors survived the ice age in the ice-free areas west of the Ural Mountains, and thereafter spread to Northern Europe. Distribution Brown bears could once be found across most of Eurasia, compared to the more limited range today. Although included as of Least Concern on the 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (which refers to the global species, not to the Eurasian brown bear specifically), local populations are becoming increasingly scarce. As the IUCN itself adds: "Least Concern does not always mean that species are not at risk. There are declining species that are evaluated as Least Concern." The brown bear has long been extinct in the British Isles (at least 1,500 years ago, possibly even 3,000 years ago), Denmark (about 4,500 years ago), the Netherlands (about 1,000 years ago, although later singles rarely wandered from Germany), Belgium and Luxembourg, with more recent extinctions in Germany (in the year 1835, although singles wandering from Italy were recorded in 2006 and 2019), Switzerland (in 1904, although a single was seen in 1923 and since 2005 there has been an increasing number of sightings of wanderers from Italy), and Portugal (in 1843, although a wanderer from Spain was recorded in 2019). Globally, the largest population is found east of the Ural mountain range, in the large Siberian forests; brown bears are also present in smaller numbers in parts of central Asia (former Soviet states). The largest brown bear population in Europe is in Russia, where it has