Pygmy Giant Panda

Taxobox
name = Pygmy Giant Panda
fossil_range = Late Pliocene
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Mammalia
ordo = Carnivora
familia = Ursidae
genus = "Ailuropoda"
species = "A. microta"
binomial = "Ailuropoda microta"The Pygmy Giant Panda ("Ailuropoda microta") is the earliest known ancestor of the Giant Panda. It measureed 1 m (3 ft.) in length; the modern Giant Panda grows to a size in excess of 1.5 m (5 ft.). Wear patterns on its teeth suggest it lived on a diet of bamboo, the primary food of the Giant Panda. The first discovered skull of the animal in China is estimated to be 2 million years old. [cite journal | last = Jin | first = Changzhu | coauthors = Russell L. Ciochon, Wei Dong, Robert M. Hunt Jr., Jinyi Liu, Marc Jaeger and Qizhi Zhu | date = 2007-06-19 | title = The first skull of the earliest giant panda | journal = Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | volume = 104 | issue = 26 | pages = 10932–10937 | url = http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0704198104v1 | format = pdf | accessdate = 2007-06-19 | doi = 10.1073/pnas.0704198104 | pmid=17578912]

References