杭州市2014高考英语冲刺阅读理解选练（5）及答案
高考英语冲刺阅读理解专项-
The discovery of an ancient giant panda skull has confirmed its bamboo diet dates back more than 2 million years and may have played a key part in its survival.
A Chinese-US research team reports its results today following studies on a fossil skull found in south China’s Cuangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 2001.
The six fossils unearthed in Jinyin Cave are dated between 2.4 and 2 million years ago, according to the report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an influential US journal.
Jin Changzhu, of the chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and lead author of the paper, said the smaller fossil skull indicates the giant pandas were about a third smaller than today’s pandas.
Researchers knew the panda reached its maximum size about 500,000 years ago, when it peaked ,and then gradually became smaller.
Jin, a paleontologist (古生物学者) at the Institute of Vertebrate paleontology and Paleoanthropology (古人类学) attached to the CAS, said the size variation was a basic rule of evolution.
