New evidence suggest that Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) might originate from Europe, not China!

Most people automatically assume that Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) have originated from China, seeing as this is the only area where they are still found, and until recently scientists would have to agree with this assumption. However, a recent scientific paper might be able to change this assumption because of new evidence that showed up during an archeological dig.

During a hunt for homoid bones in Hungary, David Begun from University of Toronto stumbled upon teeth from an animal he believed to be a panda, and after analyzing it, it was determined that it was in fact teeth from an unknown Panda-related species. The scientists who worked on the project named this newly found panda species Miomaci pannonicum, and quickly found out that the teeth were roughly 10 million years old.

Much like the Giant Panda today, the M. pannonicum used its teeth to gnaw on tough plants, but probably not bamboo. This species is most likely not a direct ancestor to the giant pandas we have alive in China today, but they were most likely closely related to its ancestor.

A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). Image by J. Patrick Fischer, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

This is not the first time a panda species has been found outside of China, and just a few years ago scientists found a 11.6 million year old giant panda fossil in Spain. These two finding suggest that the panda might have actually originated in Europe before relocating to Asia at a later point. The oldest Chinese panda fossil is “only” 8 million years ago. During these times the climate in Europe was very different, and the lush European forests probably looked a lot like the Chinese ones today, so it is not unlikely that the Pandas relocated once the climate started to become unfavorable for them in Europe.

Some scientists believe that there might have been an active migration of giant pandas during the late Miocene period based on the fact that there have been very strong similarities of the pandas found in Europe and China from this time period.

Finding links like these are very exciting, and might tell us a lot about the linage of an animal species. I’m sure the scientists who are working on this will be able to learn and teach us more about how the pandas evolved, and how they used to live in the past. I hope you found this information interesting, and make sure to leave a comment below with any questions you might have.

Thanks for reading!

About the author

Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my wife, our baby, and our two dogs; one of which is seen wearing a bow tie in the profile picture!

I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), botany, animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests.