The Ancestry of the Giant Panda

Is the panda a bear? Is it a raccoon? Or does it actually belong in a family of its own? Molecular analysis provides new insights into this long-standing genealogical problem

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About Stephen J. O'Brien

Stephen J. O’Brien was chief of the National Cancer Institute’s Laboratory of Genomic Diversity until 2012 and is now chief scientific officer at the Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics at St. Petersburg State University in Russia. He has studied the genetics of cheetahs, giant pandas, pumas and whales and of human infection by HIV.

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Scientific American Magazine Vol 257 Issue 5This article was published with the title “The Ancestry of the Giant Panda” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 257 No. 5 (), p. 102
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1187-102

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