Earliest fossil giant panda

The earliest fossil giant panda currently known to science is the pygmy giant panda Ailuropoda microta. It lived in tropical bamboo forests in southern China around 4 to 2 million years ago, during the late Pliocene epoch, and as its name suggests it was smaller than today's giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca, measuring only around 1 m long.

Some fossil pandas are known only from their teeth and jawbones, but in 2007 a fossilized skull of the pygmy giant panda was documented from a limestone cave called Jinyin in Guangxi, southern China. It was the first skull recorded for this species, and its structure revealed that the specialized cranial and dental adaptations of the genus Ailuropoda for durophagous feeding behaviour (i.e., eating hard substances) centred on bamboo were already evident in this late Pliocene species.