A recent report in the Japanese media suggests that giant pandas may not have originated in China, but in Europe, and then migrated to Asia from there.
About 6 million years ago, giant pandas probably lived in the forests of Bulgaria, where a species resembling a giant panda was discovered, known by the Japanese as the fastest evolving giant panda in Europe and the last panda in the region.
The last panda in Europe
The last panda in Europe, named Agrirritus nikolovi, is a close relative of the extant giant panda. However, this giant panda does not eat bamboo. They eat softer plants.
If they were alive, they might be as popular as giant pandas, but climate change at the end of the Miocene is thought to have wiped them out.
The fossil found in the museum archives is actually a panda
The upper and lower canine teeth of the last panda in Europe were found at the Bulgarian Museum of Natural History.
It was originally excavated in northwestern Bulgaria in the 1970s. But no one knows it's a panda because it only has a handwritten label.
Professor Spasov of the Natural History Museum identified it as a panda tooth and reported it in the Journal of Paleovertebrate Zoology (July 31, 2022).
The panda was named Agriarctos nikolovi. It is named after paleontologist Ivan Nikolov, who added fossild teeth to the museum's collection.
The teeth are black because they are excavated in the coal seam. What is found here suggests that this ancient panda lived in wetlands with trees. It is strictly a relative of the current giant panda rather than a direct ancestor.
Professor Spasov said:
This discovery highlights how little we know about ancient nature and suggests that historical archaeological discoveries can still have unintended consequences for today.
Although a herbivore, it does not eat bamboo
Robbie mainly ate plants, but did not seem to eat bamboo, while the staple food of modern giant pandas is bamboo, and bamboo is not abundant in Europe, especially in Bulgaria in the late Miocene.
In fact, the tip of Robbie's teeth didn't seem to have enough strength to crush the hard bamboo. Instead, they are likely to eat softer plants. This is in line with the general trend of giant pandas becoming more and more dependent on plants.
Pandas are carnivorous close relatives of bears, but why do they start eating plants? The reason is thought to be that the ancestors of pandas lived in the same environment as other large predators.
Professor Spasov said:
Giant pandas may have become herbivores in wet forests, especially because of competition from carnivores and other bears.
Europe's last giant panda went extinct due to climate change
Presumably, Robbie's teeth were also used to protect himself from predators. In addition, since the canine teeth are almost identical to those of modern pandas, it is thought to be of the same size or slightly smaller, but only Asian pandas have survived.
Climate change could lead to the extinction of giant pandas in Europe.
5.96 million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up and the surrounding environment underwent earth-shaking changes. This is known as the Messinian Mediterranean salinity crisis.
Professor Spasov explains this as follows:
Giant pandas are a very special kind of bear.
Although not specialized as modern giant pandas, which are both habitat and food specialization, Robbie is very specialized, and its evolution adapts to wet forests.
Therefore, the warming that occurred in southern Europe at the end of the Miocene is likely to threaten the survival of the last panda in Europe.
Where did giant pandas originate?
The only surviving member of the original species of giant pandas was the kind of giant panda that everyone sees today.
However, it is not only distributed in Asia, but also in Europe. The research team has proposed two possibilities for its origins.
One hypothesis is that a member of the giant panda family migrated from Asia and eventually became the Robbie in Europe.
But Professor Spasov warned against this hypothesis. That's because the oldest relatives of giant pandas have been found in Europe.
It is possible, then, that giant pandas originated in Europe and then migrated to Asia from there.