China once home to pygmy panda
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
About 2 million years ago, in lowland tropical forests of what is now China, there lived an ancestor of the giant panda that was very similar to the modern-day bear but was only about half its size, scientists said Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers from the University of Iowa described a complete skull -- about 60% of the size of the modern panda -- and teeth of a pygmy-sized panda. The extinct bear, Ailuropoda microta, is the earliest known member of the panda lineage.
