The news swept the media like a tabloid scandal on ice, or maybe a Z-grade horror film about how some unnatural creature lumbers in from the blank Arctic prairie to frighten and amaze.

Some called it a "Pizzly" or a "Grolar" -- a brown-splotched bruin with the claws and hump of a grizzly and the iconic white fur of a polar bear.

Shot by an Idaho sport hunter on the southern tip of Banks Island in the High Arctic of the Northwest Territories, the weird-looking animal immediately struck his Inuit guide, Roger Kuptana of Sachs Harbor, as deeply suspicious.

Soon DNA testing confirmed what scientists had considered highly unlikely, though genetically possible. The 7-foot-tall bear taken in April 2006 was the offspring of a female polar bear and male barren-ground grizzly, an improbable match that created a hybrid animal previously not seen outside of captivity.

In 2010, it happened again. Only this time, the animal was second generation. Its mother was the hybrid. And that may only be the beginning.

The possibility of interbreeding between species has been increasing throughout the Arctic -- and it's a trend that will almost certainly spell bad news for vulnerable polar animals and their genetic diversity, according to a commentary titled "The Arctic Melting Pot," published this week in Nature, the prestigious journal of natural science.

Along with the two confirmed polar bear-grizzly bear hybrids, there have been a presumed cross between beluga and narwhal, a right whale and bowhead, and more than 30 other possible combinations, wrote three Arctic researchers -- Alaska federal biologist Brendan Kelly,  University of Alaska Southeast biologist David Tallmon and University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Andrew Whiteley.

"Rapidly melting Arctic sea ice imperils species through interbreeding as well as through habitat loss," they warned. "As more isolated populations and species come into contact, they will mate, hybrids will form and rare species are likely to go extinct."

People need to start responding to this new threat with monitoring and policies, they argued.

"Plans must be developed immediately to monitor the genetics of Arctic animals and to deal with hybrids before currently discreet populations merge and at-risk species are bred out of existence," they wrote. "The rapid disappearance of sea ice leaves little time to lose."

The startling prospect of some Arctic species interbreeding themselves into oblivion is just one more biological consequence triggered by the loss of summer sea ice and thinning of entire ice pack due to global climate change.