Did giant pandas originate in Europe? Panda fossils found millions of years ago in Hungary, is it really the ancestor of pandas?
The giant panda is a unique animal in my country, or the wild community of this naive animal only exists in my country. Chinese people also love this animal very much. Therefore, it is also a “national treasure” animal and the animal with the most “Chinese characteristics”. .
China’s care and protection of giant pandas can be described as meticulous. As of October 2021, the number of giant pandas (wild and captive) in my country has grown to 2,500. As early as 2016, the “hat” of endangered animals was successfully removed. It is now a vulnerable species.
In fact, all human beings like this animal, but other countries who want to display this animal have to apply for a lease from my country, and they need special approval to make the trip. So when did the giant panda appear? Where did it first appear?
Recently, a research team from Canada and France jointly published an article on the origin of giant pandas in the journal Geobios, saying that they discovered a group of panda teeth fossils about 10 million years ago in Hungary. New Scientist and other media reported that this discovery may prove that giant pandas originated in Europe.
In fact, the incident occurred as early as 2017, and it triggered the theory that giant pandas originated in Europe in the academic world. Prior to this, the earliest fossil discovery of giant pandas was in Yuanmou County, Yunnan Province, china. As early as 1970, someone excavated a large number of fossil bones of ancient animals in a coal mine in the Lufeng Basin, Yunnan, china. Later, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified many of them as the earliest ancestors of giant pandas. The fossil of this type of panda was determined to be about 8 million years ago. Since the place where it was found was Lufeng, the ancestor of this type of panda was named “Lufeng Shi Panda”.
Later, Chinese paleontologists discovered the fossils of another ancient panda in Xiaohe, Zhupeng and other places in the northern Yuanmou Basin, Yunnan Province, and later called it “Yuanmou Shi Panda”, which provided a favorable position for China as the origin of the first panda. evidence of.
However, the tooth fossils of the ancient panda discovered in Hungary this time are about 10 million years ago (11.62 million years ago), which is 2 million years earlier than the time of the first panda fossils in Lufeng, Yunnan. It would be too far-fetched to think that the earliest origin of pandas was in Europe! Because Hungary found only two fossils of panda teeth that were suspected to be thousands of years ago, and there are no other parts of the fossils that can prove to be the ancient ancestors of today’s pandas.
Some paleontologists have said that the fossilized panda teeth found in Hungary may indicate that there were cousins of the ancestors of today’s giant pandas, but they cannot be said to be the ancestors of pandas. Fang Shengguo, director of the Germplasm Gene Protection Center for Endangered Wild Animals and Plants in my country and a professor at the School of Life Sciences of Zhejiang University, also said: “Even if this research is true, it can only be said that this is the earliest fossil of a panda-like animal discovered so far. It cannot be said that it is the ancestor of giant pandas, and it does not mean that giant pandas originated in Europe.”
The evolution of modern pandas from ancient times to the present has gone through about 4 periods, namely the ancestral panda, the small species of giant panda, the giant panda, and the modern giant panda, and my country has its own deepened complete fossil evidence chain.
The Lufeng Shi Panda and Yuanmou Shi Panda mentioned above belong to the species of Shi Panda. This animal is mainly meat-eating. According to the distribution of fossils, this panda later spread to southern China, Southeast Asia and the northwest. Pandas evolved Geshijiao Panda and Keshi Panda in Europe, but they all appeared at least 2 million years later than the Lufeng Panda in China, so there are also paleontologists who have verified that there were also Pandas in Hungary 6 million years ago. Ancient pandas exist.
An ancestral panda that came to the north evolved into a small species of giant panda about 3 million years ago. The fossils of this animal are basically only distributed in the range of China. Judging from the wear and tear of their tooth fossils, their diet has changed. , usually partially eat plants.
Later, in the process of evolution, the body of the small species of giant panda gradually became larger, and the giant panda was evolved. At this time, it was able to eat plants as its staple food, and its stable food source made its body a verified giant panda. The largest of the species, it is about 1/3 larger than today’s giant pandas.
Papian giant panda fossils are also distributed in other countries in the world, but they are found in very few places, and all of them have since become extinct. Papian giant pandas distributed in China continued to evolve until about 10,000 years ago. The modern giant panda, which is basically the same as the giant panda, appeared. Perhaps due to the relatively narrow habitat, the giant panda at this time had formed a symbiotic relationship with the bamboo forest, and more than 90% of its diet was bamboo.
The survival and evolution of modern giant pandas has also experienced many twists and turns. The ice age in the late Pleistocene caused a large number of modern giant pandas to disappear, and only a small amount of distribution in the northwest and southwest of China.
In the past few hundred years, due to human hunting and habitat reduction, the few giant pandas were on the verge of extinction. The number of precious species has gradually increased. Fortunately, we have now reversed the situation, and there is basically no need to worry about this animal going extinct.