New evidence suggests that pandas may actually be an older species of bear than we had originally believed them to be. According to one Huang Wanbo, professor from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, archaeologists were able to unearth fossils of pandas alongside those of apes in South China's Hainan province.

While Mr. Wanbo mentioned that the fossils-consisting mostly of teeth, were discovered last June 2006 in a quarry site in Changjiang Li Autonomous County. Testing showed the panda fossils to be around 400,000 years old, suggesting that pandas and great apes lived together way back when Hainan was still part of the Chinese mainland.

The modern successors of the pandas of old are the giant pandas, which are on the list of  endangered species. China sometimes loans these animals out to zoos of other countries as a gesture of goodwill.