Ailuropoda melanoleuca

The giant panda, also known as the panda bear or simply panda, is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its white coat with black patches around the eyes, ears, legs and shoulders. Its body is rotund; adult individuals weigh 100 to 115 kg and are typically 1.2 to 1.9 m long. It is sexually dimorphic, with males being typically 10–20% larger than females. A thumb is visible on its forepaw, which helps in holding bamboo in place for feeding. It has large molar teeth and expanded temporal fossae to meet its dietary requirements. It can digest starch and is mostly herbivorous with a diet consisting almost entirely of bamboo and bamboo shoots.

Ailuropoda melanoleuca

J. Patrick Fischer · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
giant pandaPBDB
Sits inside
AiluropodaPBDB
Diet
herbivore, carnivorePBDB, for Ursidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Ursidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Mass
117.5 kgWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 763 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 774 ka and 11.7 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 11 of 11 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 0 of 11 occurrences807 ka–764 ka Mya — about 0.1 occurrences764 ka–722 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences722 ka–679 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences679 ka–637 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences637 ka–595 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences595 ka–552 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences552 ka–510 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences510 ka–467 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences467 ka–425 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences425 ka–382 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences382 ka–340 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences340 ka–297 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences297 ka–255 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences255 ka–212 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences212 ka–170 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences170 ka–127 ka Mya — about 0.5 occurrences127 ka–85 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence85 ka–42 ka Mya — about 1 occurrence42 ka–0 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences1.27 Mya0 Mya

11 occurrences of Ailuropoda melanoleuca on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

11 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Ailuropoda melanoleuca and its relatives

Pleistocene

Where Ailuropoda melanoleuca and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.

Found in the same rock

160 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 11 sites for Ailuropoda melanoleuca, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

8 references

Each of the 11 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Ailuropoda melanoleuca

Credit
J. Patrick Fischer
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Ailuropoda melanoleuca was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAiluropoda through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (David 1869)