The last European giant panda lumbered through the forested wetlands of Bulgaria some six million years ago, according to new work published this week. in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The authors analyzed two tooth fossils that were in the holdings of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History and were originally found in this Eastern European country in the late 1970s. These are two teeth that provide new evidence that there existed in Europe a relative of the modern giant panda that, unlike today’s iconic black and white bear, did not rely solely on bamboo.
“Although not a direct ancestor of the genus modern giant pandais his close relative”, explains the professor at the Museum Nikolai Spasov. “This discovery shows how little we still know about ancient nature and also demonstrates that historical discoveries in paleontology can lead to unexpected results, even today.”
an unknown panda
The upper carnassial tooth and an upper canine were originally cataloged by the paleontologist Ivan Nikolav, who added them to the museum’s hoard of fossilized treasures when they were unearthed in northwestern Bulgaria. This new species is called Agriarctos nikolovi in his honor.
“They just had a vaguely handwritten label,” Professor Spassov recalls. “It took me many years to find out what the locality was and how old it was. Then it also took me a long time realizing that it was an unknown fossil giant panda“.
The charcoal deposits in which the teeth were found, which have imbued them with a blackened hue, suggest that this ancient panda inhabited forested and swampy regions. There, during the Miocene epoch, it probably ate a primarily vegetarian diet, but did not rely solely on bamboo.
Panda, forced vegetarian
Fossils of the basic grass that supports the modern panda are rare in the European and especially late Miocene Bulgarian fossil record, and the cusps of the teeth do not seem strong enough to crush the woody stems.
The cusps of the teeth do not seem strong enough to crush the woody stems
Instead, it likely fed on softer plant materials, aligning with the general trend toward greater reliance on plants in the evolutionary history of this group.
Sharing its environment with other large predators likely drove the giant panda lineage toward the vegetarianism.
“Likely competition with other species, especially carnivores and presumably other bears, explains the closer food specialization of giant pandas to plant foods under humid forest conditions,” says Professor Spassov.
Vegetarians, but not helpless
The document speculates that, however, the teeth of A. nikolovi they provided ample defense against predators. Furthermore, the canines are comparable in size to those of the modern panda, suggesting that they belonged to an animal of similar size or only slightly smaller.
The authors propose that A. nikolovi may have become extinct as a result of climate change,
The authors propose that A. nikolovi it may have become extinct as a result of climate change, likely due to the ‘Messinian salinity crisis’, an event in which the Mediterranean basin dried up, significantly altering the surrounding terrestrial environments.
“Giant pandas are a very specialized group of bears,” adds Professor Spassov. “Even if a.niklovi it was not as specialized in habitats and food as the modern giant panda, the fossil pandas were specialized enough and their evolution was related to humid and forested habitats. It is likely that climate change at the end of the Miocene in southern Europe, leading to aridification, had an adverse effect on the existence of the last European panda.”
The results also suggest that the group may have developed in Europe and then headed to Asia, where the ancestors of another genus developed. ailurctos. These early pandas may have evolved later in Ailuropodathe modern giant panda.
Previous research placed the last panda bear in Europe on the Iberian Peninsula, according to Spanish paleontologists who analyzed fossils from the Las Casines (Teruel) site where they discovered the presence of the genus Indarctosrelated to the current giant panda in China, about 6 million years ago.
Reference: Discovery of a late Turolian giant panda in Bulgaria and the early evolution and dispersal of panda lineage (Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology)
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