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Joseph Milner was an American missionary who was living in China. And during one of his visits to the marketplace,

he saw an unusual pelt, black and white. He'd never seen anything like it before.

The year was 1919. This missionary, Milner, had a feeling that the unusual pelt he'd stumbled

across in a little Chinese market was something special. So we bought it and shipped it home to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

And here it caused a sensation. The museum announced that they had this animal. They had a creature from Tibet, a rare beast.

People didn't know what this rare beast was. Some suggested it could be a bear of

some sort. One unfolded is like a story from an Indiana Jones movie. An author Dr. Nathalia

Holt has traced every detail of it. There had been many scientists who had said, this might be a hoax.

What kind of bear would have black and white?

It's been dyed. It's not real.

But it was real.

And it was a bear.

Today, we call it the giant panda.

And when that pelt was first put on display, it set the scientific world buzzing.

More expeditions set off for China to search for proof of the black and white beast.

...