Is "de" correct here?

Question

Hi,

while reading some news I stumbled across the following Spanish sentence:

Existe la probabilidad, bastante grande, que de los osos polares desaparezcan totalmente en dos de las cuatro regiones árticas que hemos tenido en cuenta en este estudio.

If I had written that sentence I would have written it without the marked occurrence of "de" and I can't make any sense of it right now. So is this correct at all here or just a typo? If it's correct, what function does it fulfil here?

This is the source of the above sentence.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

... bastante grande, de que los osos...

Answer 2

I think it´s a "finger mistake" as we say in Mexico. The correct sentence is: "Existe la probabilidad, bastante grande, de que los osos polares desaparezcan..."

Thanks for the explanation, I don't know why I didn't see that. BTW, that "finger mistake" expression you mention is interesting. I don't think it's used in actual English or at least isn't very common (but I'm not a native speaker). - RobertoLeones, Dec 19, 2010

Answer 3

que de los osos polares desaparezcan totalmente en dos de las cuatro regiones

among the polar bears less colloquially, "of all the polar bears, ...", they completely disappear in two of the four regions ...

que los osos polares desaparezcan totalmente en dos de las cuatro regiones

That the polar bears completely disappear in two of the four polar regions

Not a whole lot of difference but there is a small difference of emphasis.