The panda bear was not always a herbivore

September 16 () –

Fossil remains of a relative of the giant panda that lived 11.5 million years ago, discovered in southern Germany, reveal that He practiced a mixed diet, not only based on plants such as bamboo.

An international research team from Hamburg, Frankfurt, Madrid and Valencia led by Professor Madelaine Böhme of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen discovered this in their study of the feeding and life habits of 28 predator species from the Hammerschmiede site that have since become extinct.

Two articles have been published on the investigation of these findings in Papers in Palaeontology and Geobios.

Hammerschmiede became famous in 2019 after the discovery of the first great ape adapted to walking upright, the 11.5 million-year-old Danuvius guggenmosi. The latest excavations at the site, led by Madelaine Böhme, have brought to light an extraordinary variety of 166 fossilized species.

“Such a flourishing ecosystem offers a wealth of ecological niches for the species that inhabit it,” says Böhme. in a statement. Many of the animals lived both in water and on land, or could climb trees. “This meant that They could adapt to the river and forest landscape that existed in the region at that time,” says Böhme.

HE WEIGHED MORE THAN A HUNDRED KILOS

The only bear species in Hammerschmiede, called Kretzoiarctos beatrix, is considered the oldest ancestor of the modern giant panda, as the shape and composition of its teeth have similarities with those of pandas, which eat almost exclusively bamboo. Kretzoiarctos beatrix was smaller than modern brown bears, but weighed over 100 kilograms.

“Modern giant pandas belong to the carnivorous group in zoological taxonomy, but actually live exclusively on plants. They have specialised on a tough plant diet, specifically bamboo,” reports Dr Nikolaos Kargopoulos from the University of Tübingen and the University of Cape Town, lead author of the new studies. It is scientifically interesting how these pandas, which were originally carnivorous, adapted to such an extreme herbivorous diet.Kargopoulos adds.

In the first study, the research team investigated the diet of Kretzoiarctos using the macro and micromorphology of the teeth found.

At the macro level, the shape of teeth changes depending on their role in food processing, giving an indication of an animal’s main overall food sources. At the micro level of the tooth surface, scratches and pits caused by food particles coming into contact with the tooth can be found.

“The characteristics of these superficial changes They can provide clues about an animal’s feeding habits in the short period before its death.“, says the scientist.

The research team compared the macro- and micromorphology of Kretzoiarctos teeth with those of brown bears, polar bears, South American spectacled bears, and both living and extinct giant pandas. They concluded that the Hammerschmiede bear was not specialized on hard plants like the modern panda, But it was not a pure carnivore like the polar bear..

The extinct species’ diet was more similar to that of a modern brown bear and contained both plant and animal elements. “These results are important for our understanding of bear evolution and the development of herbivory in giant pandas. It turns out that Kretzoiarctos beatrix, the oldest of the pandas, was a generalist. Dietary specialization in pandas only occurred late in their evolution.“, says Böhme.

In addition to the panda, 27 other species of predators have been found in Hammerschmiede, the researchers report in the second study. The predators range from tiny, weasel-like animals weighing less than a kilogram to large hyenas and sabre-toothed tigers weighing more than 100 kilograms.

“Their primary food sources were very varied: there were pure carnivores like the sabre-toothed tiger, fish-eaters like the otter and bone-eaters like the hyena. Some other species, such as the panda and the pine marten, opportunistically ate plants and animals of different sizes,” says Kargopoulos.

These new species were also very different in their choice of habitat. “Otter-like animals were good swimmers; bears, hyenas and other animals stayed on the ground or lived in burrows like skunks. A surprisingly large number of species climbed trees, such as the marten, cat-like animals, genets and red pandas,” Kargopoulos explains.

“Such a diverse population of predators is not only extremely rare in fossil terms, but there is virtually no modern habitat with such a large number of species,” says Böhme. This diversity of species at the top of the food chain indicates that the Hammerschmiede ecosystem must have functioned extremely well.