That’s how my news feed on Facebook and Twitter looks like, pretty cool findings both :) I leave you here the links to the press releases and original papers.
New genus of Australian lion:
A little spoiler: just don’t get too excited about the Australian lion, it is unfortunately not an extant species. It was a little fella, one of the tiniest marsupial lions from the Oligocene-Miocene with a presumable omnivory tendency :)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-28/australian-lion-discovered-in-outback-queensland/12007324
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2019.1703722
Red pandas:
Before being placed in a family on their own (Ailuridae), Red pandas wandered around the phylogenetic tree for some time. They have been classified as close relatives to the Giant panda (among other reasons, because they both have a “false thumb” and feed on bamboo) and to the raccoon,...yeah they look kinda similar and farther back in time (around 33 million years ago) they might share some common ancestors.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51632790
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/9/eaax5751
And now a picture of two cute red panda cubs:
