Pandas have not always been confined to a few Chinese regions.
6 million years ago, they also populated Europe.
A new species has thus just been discovered in the collections of the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History in Sofia (
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
, July 31, 2022).
Two teeth discovered in the late 1970s have been reanalyzed and, according to the authors, are the last type of panda to have inhabited Europe.
This new species is named
Agriarctos nikolovi
, after its first discoverer fifty years ago, Ivan Nikolov.
"This study upsets the imagined kinship between European and Asian pandas"
, analyzes Camille Grohé, researcher at the Paleontology and Evolution Laboratory of the University of Poitiers.
“The authors offer an interesting new hypothesis: European pandas are not the ancestors of Asian pandas, but rather cousins.
Their common ancestor is not known, but would have…
This article is for subscribers only.
You have 81% left to discover.
Pushing back the limits of science is also freedom.
Keep reading your article for €0.99 for the first month
I ENJOY IT
Already subscribed?
Login
