Paleontologists in Bulgaria enjoy described a brand new species of the panda genus Agriarctos, from two fossilized teeth dating to 5.5 million years ago.
Lifestyles reconstruction of Agriarctos nikolovi. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.
The newly-described panda species lived in what is now Bulgaria for the length of the Turolian age of the Miocene epoch.
Named Agriarctos nikolovi, the outmoded endure is currently the final identified and ‘most evolved’ European panda species.
It used to be up to 2 m (6.6 toes) lengthy, comparable in measurement to the supreme folks of the living huge panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca).
Unlike these days’s iconic sad and white endure alternatively, Agriarctos nikolovi used to be no longer reliant on purely bamboo.
“Despite the undeniable truth that no longer an instantaneous ancestor of the in vogue genus of the massive panda, Ailuropoda, it’s its close relative,” acknowledged Professor Nikolai Spassov, a paleontologist at Bulgaria’s National Museum of Natural Ancient previous.
“This discovery reveals how runt we calm know about outmoded nature and demonstrates also that historic discoveries in paleontology can lead to unexpected outcomes, even these days.”
The two isolated teeth (an upper carnassial teeth and an upper dogs) of Agriarctos nikolovi had been mutter within the 1970s near the village of Ognyanovo in Sofia county, Bulgaria.
The coal deposits whereby the specimens had been found counsel that this species inhabited forested, swampy regions.
Fossils of the staple grass that sustains the in vogue panda are rare within the Leisurely Miocene of Europe — and, specifically, of Bulgaria — fossil file and the cusps of the teeth close no longer seem solid ample to crush the woody stems.
As a replace, it doubtless fed on softer plant materials — aligning with the frequent pattern in the direction of elevated reliance on vegetation on this community’s evolutionary h