22,000-yr-old fossil reveals oldest panda DNA

[Still Waters]

In August 2014, paleoanthropologist Yingqi Zhang and his team descended into a sinkhole on the hunt for Gigantopithecus, the largest known primate to ever live. They came back out with a mix of bones from the hapless creatures that had fallen into the natural "death trap."

None of those bones belonged to the extinct ape, but the team was in for a surprise: The mix included a 22,000-year-old lower jaw from an ancient panda. And within its worn edges, the jaw held what is now the world's oldest sample of panda DNA.

With just a single fossil, it’s too soon to call the creature a new species. But the genetic evidence shows that the bone belongs to a previously unknown lineage of giant panda that split from its other panda cousins about 183,000 years ago.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/oldest-panda-dna-fossil-jaw-china-paleontology-science/

[paperdyer]

Most Excellent!  Now we can send the results of this DNA with a few other Pandas to Ancestry DNA to see if they're related.