Ailuropoda

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Ailuropoda
Temporal range: Late Pliocene to Recent
The giant panda
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Subfamily: Ailuropodinae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Milne-Edwards, 1870
Species

A. baconi
A. melanoleuca
A. microta
A. minor
A. wulingshanensis

Ailuropoda fovealis skull

Ailuropoda is the only genus in the ursid (bear) subfamily Ailuropodinae. It contains one living and four fossil species of giant panda.[1]

Only one species — Ailuropoda melanoleuca — currently exists; the other four species are prehistoric chronospecies. Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivoran, the giant panda has a diet that is primarily herbivorous, which consists almost exclusively of bamboo.

Giant pandas are descended from Ailurarctos, which lived during the late Miocene.[1]

[edit] Classification

[edit] Other pandas

Formerly, the red, or lesser, panda (Ailurus fulgens) was considered closely related to giant pandas. It is not considered a bear, however, and is now classified as the sole living representative of a different carnivore family (Ailuridae).

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Jin, Changzhu; Russell L. Ciochon, Wei Dong, Robert M. Hunt Jr., Jinyi Liu, Marc Jaeger and Qizhi Zhu (June 19, 2007). "The first skull of the earliest giant panda" (PDF; fee required). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (26): 10932–10937. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704198104. PMC 1904166. PMID 17578912. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0704198104v1. Retrieved 2007-06-19. 


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