Re: News: Giant panda had pygmy ancestor.


Ye Old One wrote:
Giant panda had pygmy ancestor

AFP - Monday, June 18 10:05 pm
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/afp/20070618/tsc-us-animals-china-panda-e123fef.html

CHICAGO (AFP) - Paleontologists have discovered the skull of the giant
panda's earliest known ancestor, a "pygmy-sized" bear that lived in
south China about two million years ago, according to a study released
Monday.

The well-preserved fossil has all the hallmarks of a panda skull, but
measures about half the size of a modern panda bear skull, suggesting
the ancient ancestor was probably a miniaturized version of its modern
counterpart.

The ancient panda was at least two feet shorter in length than a
modern panda and would have been more akin in size to a medium-sized
dog, researchers said.

The artifact fills a void in the panda fossil record, confirming what
paleontologists have long suspected, namely that the modern panda
traces its origins back millions of years, and through at least two
different distinct sets of ancestors.

<sarcasm>
WHAT? You mean to tell me that they used some sort of method to
*predict* the existence of such an organism, and then fossil remains
similar to it were found? Gasp!
</sarcasm>

"This shows that the panda lineage has evolved over many millions of
years separate from all the other species in the family of bears,"
said co-author Russell Ciochon, a paleoanthropologist at the
University of Iowa.

Researchers have known for some time that the cuddly Chinese bear that
is now largely confined to the mountainous upland bamboo forests of
southwestern China, was descended from a larger bear -- scientific
name Ailuropoda baconi -- that lived about half a million years ago.

There were some clues that another ancient forbearer of the giant
panda was roaming the forests of eastern and southern China as long as
three million years ago, but the fossil evidence was not conclusive --
just a collection of isolated teeth found between 1985 and 2002.

The discovery of this skull, which Chinese researchers found in a
limestone cave in Guangxi province in south China several years ago,
seals the deal, according to Ciochon.

"This skull is well-preserved, and has all its teeth intact, and on
the basis of this fossil we can say that this bear was a miniaturized
version of the modern panda," said Ciochon.

Bah! It was just a dwarf Giant Panda! ;-)

The fact that the fossil skull had the same anatomically unique
features as modern pandas -- heavy enamel on its teeth and a
heavy-duty skull -- shows the panda was adapted to eating bamboo from
very early in its development, he said.

"Pandas are very unique bears -- the only bear species that is known
to exist on a wholly vegetarian diet," said Ciochon.

"The evolution of this unique dietary specialization probably took
millions of years to refine. Our new discovery shows the great time
depth of this unique bamboo-eating specialization in pandas."

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences and was co-written by Changzhu Jin and Jinyi Liu of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences. Paleontologist Robert Hunt of the
University of Nebraska in Lincoln also worked on the project.

--
Bob.

.

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