The Cantabrian Mountains are home to an important variety of plant life, as well as the Cantabrian brown bear ( Ursus arctos pyrenaicus ), catalogued as being in danger of extinction, which extends from Léon to areas in Palencia and Cantabria, and the Cantabrian Capercaillie ( T. urogallus cantabricus ).

Other animals associated with the range include the Iberian Wolf ( Canis lupus signatus ) and the rebeco, or Cantabrian chamois ( Rupicapra pyrenaica parva ).

The country can be divided into ten natural regions or subregions: the dominant Meseta Central, the Cantabrian Mountains ( Cordillera Cantabrica ) and the northwest region, the Ibérico region, the Pyrenees, the Penibético region in the southeast, the Andalusian Plain, the Ebro Basin, the coastal plains, the Balearic Islands, and the Canary Islands.

The Ringlet Aphantopus hyperantus is a widely distributed species found throughout much of the Palearctic ecozone. In Europe it is common in most countries but absent from northern Scandinavia, peninsular Italy ( found in North Italy ), Portugal, Southern and central Spain ( found in Cantabrian Mountains and the eastern Pyrenees ), the Mediterranean islands and North Africa. In Greece it is found in Northern regions ( Macedonia, Thessaly ) Beyond Europe it is found across much of temperate Asia including Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, China and Korea.

In response to such ambushes, police and military units, such as the infamous Koevoet, used the Cantabrian circle tactic of driving their vehicles in widening circles, using automatic weapons fire from one side to destroy the RPG teams.

The emirate's greatest failing was its inability to eradicate Christian resistance in the Basque country and the Cantabrian mountains.

The two resistances, Basque Navarre and Cantabrian Asturias, despite their small size, demonstrated an ability to maintain their independence.

The resistance in the Cantabrian mountains soon spread to Galicia in the north-west, where the occupying Moorish army was expelled and the territory was incorporated into Asturias.

The Kingdom of Asturias was located in the Cantabrian Mountains, a wet and mountainous region in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.

In a drive to consolidate his southern border, he repopulates the city of Zamora with some of his Cantabrian ( montañeses ) subjects.

The Bay of Biscay (, more commonly named as Mar Cantábrico, in English Cantabrian Sea ; ; ; ; Gascon: Golf de Gasconha ) is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea.

The southern end of the gulf is also called in Spanish " Mar Cantábrico " ( Cantabrian Sea ), from the Estaca de Bares, as far as the mouth of Adour river, but this name is not generally used in English.

The Bay of Biscay is the birthplace of what is considered one of the world's most successful and most renowned maritime industries, the Basque and Cantabrian shipbuilders and fishermen.

The birthplace of the Asturian kingdom was the western and central territory of the Cantabrian Mountains part of the Gallaecia, particularly the Picos de Europa and the central area of Asturias.

Shown are the typical Asturian cottages, which were already in use in the time of the AsturesClassical geographers give conflicting views of the ethnic description of the above mentioned peoples: Ptolemy says that the Astures extended along the central area of current Asturias, between the Navia and Sella rivers, fixing the latter river as the boundary with the Cantabrian territory.

In any case, ethnic borders in the Cantabrian mountains were not so important after that time, as the clans divisions that permeated the pre-roman societies of all the peoples of Northern Iberia fell under similar political administrative culture impossed on them by the Romans.

This situation started to change during the Late Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages, when an Asturian identity started to develop gradually: The centuries-old fight among Visigoths or Suebians nobles may have helped to forge a distinct identity among the peoples of the Cantabrian districts.

In fact, the Kingdom of Asturias originated as a focus of leadership over other peoples of the Cantabrian Coast that had resisted the Romans as well as the Visigoths and that were not willing to subject themselves to the dictates of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Initially only Alphonse moved to the court in Cangas, but after the progressive depopulation of the Plateau and the Middle Valley of the Ebro, where the main strongholds of the Duchy of Cantabria such as Amaya, Tricio and City of Cantabria were located, the descendants of Duke Peter withdrew from Rioja towards the Cantabrian area and in time controlled the destiny of the Kingdom of Asturias.

Second, there are biological and cultural differences between the inhabitants of the Cantabrian zone and those of the central Plateau.

The initial Asturian expansion is carried out mainly through Cantabrian territory ( from Galicia to Vizcaya ) and it will be necessary to wait until the reigns of Ordoño I and Alphonse III for the Kingdom of Asturias to take effective possession of the territories located south of the Cantabrian Mountains.

Image of the Santa Cruz dolmen, burial place of chieftains of the Eastern Asturian area since Megalithic times. Although the earliest evidence of Christian worship in Asturias date from the 5th century, evangelisation did not make any substantial progress until the middle of the 6th century, when hermits like Santo Turibius of Liébana and monks of the Saint Fructuoso order gradually settled in the lands of the Cantabrian mountains and began preaching the Christian doctrine to the locals.

These people had fought the Romans in the Cantabrian Wars, and initially resisted Romanisation.

* Start of the Cantabrian Wars against Roman occupation in Hispania.

Augustus wintered at Tarraco after his Cantabrian campaign, and bestowed many marks of honour on the city, among which were its honorary titles of Colonia Victrix Togata and Colonia Julia Victrix Tarraconensis.

Some subspecies, such at Attwater's Prairie Chicken and the Cantabrian Capercaillie, and some national and regional populations are also in danger.

Wildlife includes brown bears, black bears, the endemic Alexander Archipelago wolf, Sitka black-tailed deer, humpback whales, orcas, five species of salmon, bald eagles, harlequin ducks, scoters, and marbled murrelets.

However, the Californian, North African ( Atlas bear ), and Mexican subspecies were hunted to extinction in the 1870s, 1922, and more recently, respectively, and the not officially recognized Marsican brown bear in central Italy is believed to have a population of just 30 to 40 bears.

The brown bear is the most widely distributed of all bears.

It is thought brown bears were unable to migrate south until the extinction of the much larger Arctodus simus.

Several paleontologists suggest the possibility of two separate brown bear migrations: grizzlies are thought to stem from narrow-skulled bears which migrated from northern Siberia to central Alaska and the rest of the continent, while Kodiak bears descend from broad-skulled bears from Kamchatka, which colonized the Alaskan peninsula.

There is little agreement on classification of brown bears.

DNA analysis recently revealed that the identified subspecies of brown bears, both Eurasian and North American, are genetically quite homogeneous, and that their genetic phylogeography does not correspond to their traditional taxonomy.

Alaskan moose have been reported to successfully fend off attacks from black bears, brown bears and grizzlies.

Siberian Tigers and brown bear are also known to prey on moose, although bears are more likely to take over a wolf kill or to take young moose than to hunt adult moose on their own.

However, evidence of hybrids between polar bears and brown bears, and of the recent evolutionary divergence of the two species, does not support the establishment of this separate genus, and the accepted scientific name is now therefore Ursus maritimus, as Phipps originally proposed.

Polar bears are thought to have diverged from a population of brown bears that became isolated during a period of glaciation in the Pleistocene.

Further, some clades of brown bear, as assessed by their mtDNA, are more closely related to polar bears than to other brown bears, meaning that the polar bear would not be a true species according to some species concepts.

The mtDNA of Irish brown bears is particularly close to polar bears.

A comparison of the nuclear genome of polar bears with that of brown bears revealed a different pattern, the two forming genetically distinct clades that diverged approximately 603, 000 years ago, although the latest research is based on analysis of the complete genomes ( rather than just the mitochondria or partial nuclear genomes ) of polar, brown and black bears, and establishes the divergence of polar and brown bears at 4-5 million years ago.

The brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America.

The scientific name of the brown bear, Ursus arctos, can be considered a tautology, since " Ursus " means " bear " in Latin and " arctos " comes from the Greek word for bear.

The mitochondrial DNA ( mtDNA ) of the polar bear diverged from the brown bear, Ursus arctos, roughly 150, 000 years ago.

* The brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America.

The American bison ( Bison bison ), brown bear or grizzly bear ( Ursus arctos ), and elk or wapiti ( Cervus canadensis ) entered North America around the same time as the first humans, and expanded rapidly, filling ecological niches left empty by the newly-extinct North American megafauna.

According to Messner, the Yeti is actually the endangered Himalayan brown bear, Ursus arctos isabellinus, which can walk both upright or on all fours.

Both the cave bear and the brown bear are thought to be descended from the Plio-Pleistocene Etruscan bear ( Ursus etruscus ) that lived about 5. 3 Mya to 10, 000 years ago.

Ursus is a genus in the family Ursidae ( bears ) that includes the widely distributed brown bears, the polar bear, and black bears.

** European brown bear, Ursus arctos arctos

** East Siberian brown bear, Ursus arctos collaris

** Kamchatka brown bear, Ursus arctos beringianus

** Himalayan brown bear, Ursus arctos isabellinus

** Syrian brown bear, Ursus arctos syriacus

** Ussuri brown bear, Ursus arctos lasiotus

The California golden bear or California grizzly ( Ursus arctos californicus ) is an extinct subspecies of the brown bear.

The Kodiak bear ( Ursus arctos middendorffi ), also known as the Kodiak brown bear or the Alaskan grizzly bear or American brown bear, occupies the islands of the Kodiak Archipelago in South-Western Alaska.

Subsequent taxonomic revisions merged most North American brown bears into a single subspecies ( Ursus arctos horribilis ), but Kodiak bears are still considered to be a unique subspecies ( Ursus arctos middendorffi ).

The cranium is about twice the length of that of a modern Alaskan brown bear ( Ursus arctos middendorffi ), but with a lower length-to-width ratio, and about triple the length of an American wolf's ( Canis lupus occidentalis ).

The Atlas bear ( Ursus arctos crowtheri ) is an extinct subspecies of the brown bear, which is sometimes classified as a distinct species.

The brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) is found in mountainous and semi-open areas distributed throughout the Holarctic.