Vly News - Professional news Platform

Newswise — Tracing the forested wetlands of Bulgaria some six million years ago, a new species of panda has been discovered by scientists who claim that it is currently the last known and “most developed” European giant panda. Excavated from the bowels of Bulgaria’s National Museum of Natural History, two tooth fossils originally discovered in the eastern European country in the late 1970s, provide new evidence of a sizable relative of the modern giant panda. Unlike today’s iconic black and white bears, they did not rely on pure bamboo. “Although not a direct ancestor of the modern genus of giant pandas, it is a close relative,” explains Museum Professor Nikolai Spassov, whose findings were published today in a peer-reviewed publication. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . “This discovery demonstrates how little we still know about the primeval realm and demonstrates also that historic discoveries in paleontology can yield unexpected results, even today.” The upper carnival teeth, an

image: Reconstruction of A. nikolovi sp. Nov. from Bulgaria. Artwork by Velizar Simeonovski, Chicago. see again Credit: © Velizar Simeonovski, Chicago Tracing the forested wetlands of Bulgaria some six million years ago, a new species of panda has been discovered by scientists who say today is the last known and “most evolved” European giant panda. Excavated from the bowels of Bulgaria’s National Museum of Natural History, two tooth fossils originally discovered in the eastern European country in the late 1970s, provide new evidence of a sizable relative of the modern giant panda. Unlike today’s iconic black and white bears, they did not rely on pure bamboo. “Although not a direct ancestor of the modern genus of giant pandas, it is a close relative,” explains Museum Professor Nikolai Spassov, whose findings were published today in a peer-reviewed publication. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . “This discovery demonstrates ho

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