In the late 1970s , in northwestern Bulgaria, a team of paleontologists found two obsidian-black teeth, a curved upper canine and upper premolar. They were preserved but never properly catalogued, and for several decades remained intact in the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History in Sofia.
The last panda in Europe
When researchers examined the teeth, which had been stored for some 40 years in this museum, they discovered that the fossils belonged to a never-before-seen species of ancient European panda, which they named Agriarctos nikolovi. The newly discovered species , which is a close relative of modern giant pandas, roamed the continent about 6 million years ago with its up to two meters long; and was probably the last of Europe’s pandas.
While the evolutionary history of bears remains uncertain, it adds evidence to suggestions that pandas might have evolved in Europe.
“Although it is not a direct ancestor of the modern giant panda genus, it is its close relative. This discovery shows how little we still know about ancient nature and demonstrates that historical paleontological finds can lead to unexpected results, even today,” say the researchers. researchers in their study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Meat or bamboo?
Interestingly, experts say that unlike today’s iconic black and white bear, the European panda would not have eaten much bamboo because its teeth weren’t strong enough, while it was also forced to be a vegetarian because it was outclassed. competition for meat.
Scientists believe that it probably fed on softer plant materials, which aligns with the general trend towards greater reliance on plants in the evolutionary history of this group. Sharing their environment with other large predators likely drove the giant panda lineage toward vegetarianism. Experts believe that European pandas were outcompeted for meat and settled on plants as their most convenient evolutionary niche.
“Likely competition with other species, especially carnivores and presumably other bears, explains the closer food specialization of giant pandas to plant foods under humid forest conditions,” says co-author Nikolai Spassov.
It is believed that it disappeared due to climate change.
The authors propose that A. nikolovi may have become extinct as a result of climate change, likely due to the ‘Messinian salinity crisis’, an event in which the Mediterranean basin dried up, significantly altering the surrounding terrestrial environments.
“Giant pandas are a very specialized group of bears,” adds Professor Spassov. “Even if A. niklovi was not as specialized for habitats and food as the modern giant panda, fossil pandas were specialized enough and their evolution was related to wet and forested habitats. It is likely that climate change at the end of the Miocene (from 23 million to 5 million years ago) in southern Europe, which led to aridity, had an adverse effect on the existence of the last European panda.”
Reference: Qigao Jiangzuo, Nikolai Spassov. A late Turolian giant panda from Bulgaria and the early evolution and dispersal of the panda lineage. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2022; DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.2054718
