It is the earliest panda which is mainly carnivorous and evolved from an animal similar to a bear. The main branches of Eocene pandas continued to evolve in central and southern China. One of them appeared in the early Pleistocene about 30 thousand years ago, smaller than a panda. Inferred from its teeth, it has evolved into an omnivore that eats bamboo and a bear that lays eggs. Since then, this main branch has expanded to the subtropical zone.

In this process, the giant panda adapted to the life of subtropical bamboo forest, gradually became bigger and lived on bamboo. The giant panda reached its peak in the middle and late Pleistocene 50,000-70,000 years ago. Fossils show that the ancestors of giant pandas appeared in the early Holocene 2-3 million years ago. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was the heyday of the giant panda, belonging to the saber-toothed elephant paleontology. The giant panda's habitat once covered most of the eastern and southern parts of China, from Beijing in the north to southern Myanmar and northern Viet Nam in the south.