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Ailuropoda; Fossil range: Late Pliocene to Recent
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia;
Phylum:	Chordata;
Class:	Mammalia;
Order:	Carnivora;
Family:	Ursidae;
Genus:	Ailuropoda; Milne-Edwards, 1870
Species
	†A. baconi; A. melanoleuca; †A. microta; †A. minor; †A. wulingshanensis

Ailuropoda fovealis skull

Ailuropoda is an ursid genus containing five species of giant pandas^[1]. Only one species, the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) currently exists; the other four species are prehistoric chronospecies. Despite its taxonomic classification as a carnivore, the panda has a diet that is primarily herbivorous, which consists almost exclusively of bamboo.

Pandas are descended from Ailurarctos, which lived during the late Miocene^[1].

[edit] Classification

†Ailuropoda microta (late Pliocene)
†Ailuropoda wulingshanensis (late Pliocene - early Pleistocene)
†Ailuropoda baconi (Pleistocene)
†Ailuropoda minor (Pleistocene)
Ailuropoda melanoleuca

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Jin, Changzhu; Russell L. Ciochon, Wei Dong, Robert M. Hunt Jr., Jinyi Liu, Marc Jaeger and Qizhi Zhu (June 19, 2007). "The first skull of the earliest giant panda" (PDF; fee required). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (26): 10932–10937. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704198104. PMID 17578912. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0704198104v1. Retrieved 2007-06-19.

This article about a carnivoran is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[pnas-0] Jin, Changzhu; Russell L. Ciochon, Wei Dong, Robert M. Hunt Jr., Jinyi Liu, Marc Jaeger and Qizhi Zhu (June 19, 2007). "The first skull of the earliest giant panda" (PDF; fee required). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (26): 10932–10937. doi:10.1073/pnas.0704198104. PMID 17578912. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0704198104v1. Retrieved 2007-06-19.

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