Six-million-year-old European panda identified by two teeth

Two teeth, a carnassial and a canine, have unearthed a species of panda 6 million years old in Europe.

These tooth fossils were in the National Museum of Natural History in Bulgaria, explains

on Monday, relaying a study published in the

.

They had been discovered in the 1970s in the northwest of the country in a coal deposit which had colored them black.

, the name of this European panda, is said to be the closest relative of the modern giant panda.

🚨New Pub!🚨A late Turolian giant panda from Bulgaria and the early evolution and dispersal of the panda lineage 🐼🇧🇬by Jiangzuo & Spassovhttps://t.co/SIvVU8wMDH

— Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (@JVP_vertpaleo) August 1, 2022

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Already a vegetarian

He was similar to his Asian cousin: a height of 1m50 for a weight of a hundred kilos.

It lived in a wooded and swampy environment and did not feed on bamboo, its teeth not being developed enough to crush the woody stems of plants.

His diet turned instead to soft and diverse plant matter.

It is later, in Asia, that the food made exclusively of bamboo would have settled.

The European panda was also in competition with many other predators.

It may have disappeared as a result of the "Messinian salinity crisis", which took place between 5.96 and 5.33 million years before present.

A time when the Mediterranean dried up due to the closing of the Strait of Gibraltar and transformed the climate into a hotter and drier environment throughout the basin.

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