When our ancestors wandered across Asia some 80,000 years ago , they would have come cheek to face with a whole zoo of beasts no longer around today , from towering mammoth to the largest tortoises ever know .
But they would also have in all likelihood come across another creature now out : a completelydistinct character of giant panda .
In the caves of Guangxi Province , China , research worker discovered the ancient remains of a giant bear cat date to 22,000 geezerhood old . But there was a snatch , as today there are no pandas subsist in this lush craggy part that borders Vietnam to the Confederate States of America . With the paucity of ancient elephantine panda fossils – due in large part to the fact that they live in lactating , humid environments – this find represent a rare opportunity to study the fatal - and - white creature ’s past .
Publishing their results in the journalCurrent Biology , the team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences detail how they were able to extract mitochondrial DNA ( mtDNA ) from the skull that had been found in the Cizhutuo cave . This give the researcher a rare glimpse into the ancient matrilineal line of giant Ailuropoda melanoleuca .
By compare what they could sequence with that of modern - day panda ’s in addition to 32 other ancient bears , they could build up a more detail painting of the giant panda ’s evolutionary history .
“ Using a individual thoroughgoing mtDNA episode , we find a distinguishable mitochondrial blood line , suggest that the Cizhutuo red panda , while genetically more intimately related to present - day panda than other bear , has a cryptic , freestanding story from the common ancestor of present - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. pandas , ” explains the Chinese Academy of Sciences ’s Qiaomei Fu , ina statement .
The solvent found that the last rough-cut ancestor between the modern cat bear and the Cizhutuo panda was inhabit between 144,000 and 227,000 age ago , but that this now extinct kind was living and evolve in parallel to the modern bear rather than defend the antiquated type .
Today , the 2,500 outlast angry elephantine cat bear are limited to a few mountain ranges in central China , but once were much more widespread . Comparing the genes between the modern panda bear and the now extinct one , they found a handful of mutations in the Cizhutuo panda that could represent local adaptations to the more southern habitat in which they once last .
The team now want to stress and pull out the atomic genome of the Cizhutuo cat bear and compare that with the modern variety , to see if that could help oneself reveal any more secret of the enigmatic bears ' ancient past .
