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Scientists Climbed Into A Sinkhole And Found 22,000 Year Old Panda Fossils

Nat Geo – 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.

I don’t really care about pandas. If the world’s bear population was forced into some sort of “Hunger Games” type scenario for the sake of determining the best species of bear, pandas would be amongst the first to die. The only reason I’m even giving them a chance is because of those weird sloth bears in Asia. Here’s a fun fact: I’m pretty sure Baloo from the critically acclaimed film, “The Jungle Book”, was based off a sloth bear. Baloo was a solid vocal performer, but he wouldn’t last a day on an island with other bears out to kill him. I might even give a panda with the right attitude a shot at a sloth bear. Anything can happen in those life or death type situations.

The cool part about this story is the existence of a sinkhole just filled with fossils from tens of thousands of years worth of stupid ass animals falling into it and dying on impact, and present day scientists getting to just hop down there and make amazing discoveries. It’s pretty much just a naturally occurring time capsule. I would pay a lot of $$ to be able to go down there and poke my tiny little head around. Put on a visor with a flashlight attached to it and just explore the shit outta that sinkhole. Get all up in it, gently meandering around with my flashlight visor.

The rest of the story goes on to talk about how pandas have been around for a long time and that’s exciting to some people but not me. To rehash my original point, pandas are overrated anyway. Extremely overrated. The best things to come from pandas have all been in the form of movies. Kung Fu Panda is an elite animated movie franchise and I don’t want to hear anything else about that. That and the scene featured above from one of my favorite movies of all time, Tropic Thunder. But do I go to the zoo to see a fucking panda? Not in a million years. It ain’t happening. Fossils are cool, but not pandas. Put that in the fucking books.