GIANT PANDAS ROAMED EUROPE SIX MILLION YEARS AGO
Teeth found in Bulgaria in the 1970s confirm a new species of ancient panda
Closer examination of two fossilised teeth stored at the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History has revealed they belonged to a species of giant panda that lived in Europe around six million years ago. The two teeth – an upper carnassial and an upper canine – were discovered in a coalfield in northwestern Bulgaria in the 1970s. At the time, palaeontologist Ivan Nikolov put a handwritten label on them and they were added to the museum’s collection of fossils. And that, for nearly 50 years, was that.
Recently, a team of palaeontologists led by the museum’s Prof Nikolai Spassov have re-examined the fossils, and come to the conclusion that they must have belonged to a giant panda species that lived in the region around six million years ago, during the Late Miocene. “Although not a direct ancestor of the modern genus of the giant panda, it is its close relative,” said Spassov.
While it was previously known that pandas could once be found in Europe, debate rages as to whether they spread to Europe from Asia, or vice versa. The new species lived more recently than other known species, leading the team to speculate that this may have been the last panda species to grace the European continent.
Unsurprisingly, the amount of information that can be gleaned from a couple of teeth is fairly limited. As Spassov explains, even establishing that they came from a panda took a while.
“They had only one label written vaguely by hand,” he said. “It took me many years to figure out what the locality was and what its age was, and then to realise that this was an unknown fossil giant panda.”
What Spassov and co-author Qigao Jiangzuo from Peking University can say is that the panda would have lived in swampy, forested regions – because that’s what coalfields once looked like – and that it existed on a largely vegetarian diet. But unlike the modern giant panda, that diet would not have been bamboo. The teeth do not appear strong enough to bite through bamboo stems, and there is little evidence of the plant in the region’s fossil record from that era.
It is believed that the ancient species may have fallen victim to climate change. Around 5.33 million years ago, at the end of the Miocene, the Mediterranean basin began to dry up, which would have had a devastating effect on the panda’s swampy habitat.
The species would have been similar in size to today’s iconic black and white bears. It has been named Agriarctos nikolovi, in honour of the man who first labelled the fossils.