Most primitive living bear

The most primitive species of living bear is the giant panda Ailuropoda melanoleuca. In terms of its evolutionary development and delineation, this species diverged from all other bears between 18 and 25 million years ago, and is housed within its own subfamily, Ailuropodinae. Ever since the giant panda was first brought to Western scientific attention in 1869 by French missionary Père Armand David while visiting China, there has been considerable controversy as to how this species and the smaller, long-tailed, lesser or red panda Ailurus fulgens, also native to China, should be classified. At one time or another, the two pandas have been categorized as raccoons, as bears, and as the only two members of their very own taxonomic family. During the past three decades, however, advances in genetic analyses have finally revealed the truth – everyone was wrong. The two pandas are not closely related to each other at all. Instead, whereas the giant panda has been found to be a bear, it has been shown that the lesser panda is not closely related to the giant panda, or to raccoons, or to bears, and therefore is nowadays housed in a family all to itself.