When was the first panda discovered

By Jasmin Fox-Skelly

Its roots could be in another part of the world

NurPhoto/Getty

A bear very similar to a panda lived in what’s now Hungary 10 million years ago. The creature ate a similar diet to modern giant pandas, suggesting their unusual bamboo-chewing lifestyle has survived through evolutionary time. The finding also adds to the evidence that pandas originated in Europe, not Asia.

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is only found in forested mountain ranges in central China. It famously eats little but indigestible bamboo, despite having the digestive system of a carnivore, and is one of the world’s most iconic vulnerable species. This black-and-white bear is the only surviving member of the Ailuropodinae subfamily, part of the larger Ursidae family.

Nobody really knows how the giant panda evolved. Few fossils of its relatives have been found, so its lineage is almost as hotly debated as that of humans.

Now palaeoanthropologist David Begun at the University of Toronto in Canada has found a set of fossil teeth in the town of Rudabánya, Hungary. The site previously yielded the remains of an ancient great ape called Rudapithecus, a possible ancestor of African great apes and humans.

Begun was looking for ancient hominid bones when he spotted the teeth trapped beneath a rhino’s shoulder blade. The teeth are 10 million years old, placing them in the late Miocene.

Suspecting they belonged to a panda, based on their shape, Begun enlisted the help of Louis de Bonis at the University of Poitiers in France and Juan Abella at the State University Santa Elena Peninsula in Ecuador.

Chewing the veg

The team compared the shape, structure and wear patterns of the teeth with those of other bears. Such wear patterns, created when food being chewed scrapes away some tooth enamel, can reveal what an animal ate – and in this case they were similar to those of giant pandas. “Both species consumed tough plant foods, requiring shearing rather than crushing of food during chewing,” says de Bonis. “This tell us that the way of life of the panda’s ancestors was very similar to the modern panda.”

The teeth belonged to a previously unknown panda, and the team has named the species Miomaci panonnicum. “Miomaci could be considered not like a direct ancestor, but more like a ‘cousin’ of the modern panda,” says de Bonis. “Their lineage probably separated in the middle Miocene period.”

“From the description, it appears to be closer to the split between giant pandas and the rest of the carnivores, including bears,” says Russell Ciochon at the University of Iowa. “The fossil they found lacks the very specialised dental anatomy found in modern giant pandas, which evolved in southern China around 2 million years ago, and is believed to be when pandas became dependent on bamboo.”

Panda history

Since giant pandas are confined to China, we had assumed that the panda family has been living there since shortly after it split off from other bears. Some fossils support that idea. Asian caves have yielded teeth from Ailuropoda baconi, which lived 750,000 years ago, and a skull from Ailuropoda microta from 2 million years ago. Fossil pandas can be found in China as far back as 8 million years ago.

However, in 2012 scientists found teeth from possibly the oldest known direct ancestor of the giant panda, Kretzoiarctos beatrix. They were 11.6 million years old and were discovered in Spain, suggesting the giant panda’s ancestors originated in Europe before migrating to Asia. The Miomaci teeth support that idea.

“There are interesting similarities between animal fossils found in some European and Chinese sites in the late Miocene period, suggesting that there may have been a lot of travelling between the two areas,” says Begun.

“The direct lineage of the extant giant panda is likely to be Asian, but related to the older European forms, which are extinct sister lineages,” says Abella.

“Because apes migrated from Rudabánya to mainland Asia, it proves that a migration route was possible,” says Ciochon. “However, without more data we can’t determine if an early giant panda evolved in Asia and moved to Europe, or travelled in the other direction.”

Climate may have played a role. When Miomaci lived, Europe was warmer and wetter than it is today. The chemical make-up of other teeth from Rudabánya suggest the area was once a lush subtropical forest on the shores of a lake.

Such forests disappeared from Europe about 5 million years ago, and this may have spelled the demise of European pandas. “The environment cooled and dried out,” says de Bonis. “There was a change in the faunas in Europe, and the species linked to dense warm forest disappeared.” China could have been the only congenial home for surviving pandas.

Journal reference: Geobios, DOI: 10.1016/j.geobios.2017.09.003

The discovery of the giant panda took place less than 150 years ago, when a French Catholic priest got his hands on 'a most excellent black and white bear'

The first westerner to clap eyes on a panda is thought to have been a French priest and naturalist known as Armand David. He’d been posted to China in 1862 to spread the Christian word, but was a keen naturalist too (“all science is dedicated to the study of God’s works and glorifies the Author”) and went on several collecting trips over the course of his stay, sending specimens back to the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

Given the panda’s celebrity today, it is rather strange that David should be most famous for bringing Elaphurus davidianus (commonly known as Père David’s Deer) to the attention of the zoological world, but he is also the man who set the panda bandwagon in motion. In April 1869, whilst stationed at the Dengchi Valley Cathedral in the wild mountains northwest of Chengdu in Sichuan, his hired hunters brought him the body of a young black and white bear.

In 2010, I paid a visit to the Dengchi Valley Cathedral, one of the oldest surviving Catholic churches in Sichuan, to get closer to this historic panda moment. When I arrived, the huge oak doors were locked and the few houses nearby looked deserted, but a bark from my guide brought a young woman bearing keys. She led me into the still-functional chapel (evidence of the missionary zeal of David and friends?) and then into the room that David himself had apparently occupied.

Cracks of sunshine pierced the weather-worn shutters, bathing an understated four-poster, two desks and several chairs in warmth. Perhaps I was being sold a fiction – for all I know, David could have been holed up in a different room with a different suite of furniture – but I was taken by the idea that this is the table on which he laid out the cold corpse of that very first panda all those years ago. Once dissected, he rolled up the skin and shipped it to France.

David sent a letter separately to Alphonse Milne-Edwards, his zoological contact at the Paris museum. In it, he tentatively proposed the Latin name Ursus melanoleucus – literally black-and-white bear – and went on to describe its extraordinary markings.

I have not seen this species in the museums of Europe and it is easily the most pretty I have come across; perhaps it will turn out to be new to science!

And so it was, the taxonomists eventually settling on the Latin name Ailuropoda melanoleuca. Armand David’s young “black-and- white bear” was used to describe the species to science and now lies somewhere in the Zoothèque, a subterranean vault beneath the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle filled with the remains of millions of dead animals.

I read up on Père David’s panda for my book The Way of the Panda, but I have yet to visit the Zoothèque in Paris. This, I think, should be one of my resolutions for 2014, but I would like to hear from anyone that has been on a tour. Please leave a comment or send me a message on Twitter @WayOfThePanda.

If there is a zoological specimen with a great story that you would like to see profiled, please contact Henry Nicholls @WayOfThePanda.

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