Ancient polar bear jawbone found BBC - December 10, 2007
Earliest Panda Skull Reveals Bamboo-Eating "Pygmy" National Geographic - June 18, 2007
AP - September 22, 2006
Scientists uncovered a second fossil of a red panda species first discovered at the Gray Fossil Site two years ago. Researchers from East Tennessee State University found a lower jawbone from a red panda of the Pristinailurus bristoli species last week. "The nice thing about it is that it's confirmation," Dr. Steven Wallace, ETSU's lead paleontologist at the site, said Wednesday. "You hate to have a one-shot wonder."
The species was discovered in January 2004 when ETSU researchers found a panda tooth and other skeletal fragments. Only the second panda fossil found on the continent, the remains turned out to be a previously unknown species in the red panda family. Scientists believe the jawbone is from a second specimen of the same species of red panda because the teeth are older than the first tooth found.
"The first tooth was virtually unerupted. It had no wear," Wallace said. "This was from a much older adult that had full wear on all its teeth. Although the jawbone was found in two pieces, it is nearly complete. What it's missing are the little front premolars, which are really tiny and often fall out, but other than that, it's a really nice specimen." The Gray Fossil Site near Johnson City was discovered during the widening of a highway in 2000 and is estimated at 4.5 million to 7 million years old.
February 23, 2005 - Reuters
The skeleton of a giant panda has been found in a 4,000-year-old tomb in central China, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday, adding that the now-endangered animals were apparently being hunted at that time.
Wu Xianzhu, of the Hubei Provincial Archaeology Research Institute, said pigs and dogs had been used in burials as "funerary objects" since the early New Stone Age, dating back about 8,000 years.
"Burying the giant pandas with the dead shows that ancient people had close contact with the creatures," he was quoted as saying.
The No. 77 tomb, in the Guanzhuangping Ruins of Zigui County, is the only tomb to have been found with panda remains.
"When the tomb was first excavated in 2001, the animal remains found were believed to be the bone of the lower jaw of a pig. But with further research, archaeologists decided that the bone belonged to a giant panda," Wu was quoted as saying.
Panda bones had been unearthed from other ruins from the same period, indicating that pandas were hunted by human beings at the time, it said.
Pandas have boosted their numbers in the wild by almost half to about 1,600 in just a few years thanks to enlarged habitat and improved ecosystems, Xinhua said last month.
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