When researchers examined the teeth, which had been kept in storage for around 40 years, they discovered that the fossils belonged to a never-before-seen species of ancient European panda.

Mei Xiang, a 22-year-old panda, eats bamboo at the Smithsonian National Zoo on May 20, 2021, in Washington, D.C. A giant prehistoric panda lumbered through the forests and swamps of Eastern Europe ...

After analyzing fossil teeth found nearby, the team deduced that the false thumb belonged to Ailurarctos, an ancestral panda that lived during the Miocene Epoch, six million to seven million years ...

The only evidence of the newly-identified panda species — dubbed Agriarctos nikolovi — are two fossilized teeth found in a lump of coal in Bulgaria almost 50 years ago, according to a study ...

Giant panda caretaker Akmal Hadi Samsuddin checks the teeth of giant panda Liang Liang at the Giant Panda Conservation Center at Zoo Negara near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Aug 21, 2022.