The last panda in Europe is a weak giant who can't even eat bamboo
Artist’s interpretation of a new species of European panda. (Image credit: © Velizar Simeonovski, Chicago) (opens in a new tab) A pair of fossilized teeth in the museum’s collection was recently revealed when pandas last roamed Europe. When the researchers examined the teeth, which had been in storage for about 40 years, they found that the fossils belonged to an ancient European panda species that had never been seen before. The newly discovered species, which is a close relative of the modern giant panda, roamed the continent about 6 million years ago and was likely the last panda in Europe. The teeth – the upper canines and upper molars – were originally excavated in the late 1970s from a site in northwestern Bulgaria, but were eventually housed in the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History in Sofia. The teeth were never properly cataloged, and as a result they were left untouched for decades. But when museum staff recently discovered an unusual tooth, they decided to i