Ailuropoda

Panda
The giant panda, the only extant species in the genus and subfamily
Ailuropoda fovealis (=A. melanoleuca baconi=[4]) skull
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Carnivora
Family: Ursidae
Subfamily: Ailuropodinae
Genus: Ailuropoda
Milne-Edwards, 1870[1][2]
Type species
Ailuropoda melanoleuca
David, 1869[3]
Species

†A. baconi
A. melanoleuca
†A. microta
†A. wulingshanensis

Ailuropoda is the only extant genus in the ursid (bear) subfamily Ailuropodinae. It contains one living and one or more fossil species of panda.[4][5]

Only one species—Ailuropoda melanoleuca—currently exists; the other three 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 have descended from Ailurarctos, which lived during the late Miocene.[5]

  1. ^ Milne-Edwards, Alphonse (1870). "Note sur quelques mammifères du Thibet oriental". Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Zoologie. Ser. 5. 14 (10): 1.
  2. ^ Milne-Edwards, Alphonse (1870). "Note sur quelques Mammifères du Thibet oriental". Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences. 70: 341–342.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference David1869 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Hu et al. 2023 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ a b Jin, Changzhu; Russell L. Ciochon; Wei Dong; Robert M. Hunt Jr.; Jinyi Liu; Marc Jaeger & Qizhi Zhu (June 19, 2007). "The first skull of the earliest giant panda". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (26): 10932–10937. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10410932J. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704198104. PMC 1904166. PMID 17578912.