17 Cute Facts about Pandas

The ancestor of the giant panda is the Ailurarctos (“cat bear”), which is an extinct genus of the Chinese panda that lived 8 million years ago. The skull of another ancestor, Ailuropoda microta, shows that it was half the size of a modern-day giant panda. Research shows that for the past 3 million years, giant pandas have evolved as a separate linage from other bears.