“The animal sacrifice pits that we excavated this time could be a replica of the royal gardens and farms in western Han dynasty,” Hu Songmei, an archaeologist at the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology and part of the team that excavated the skeleton, wrote in a paper that she co-authored with two colleagues, which was published last week in the journal Chinese Social Sciences Today.

Hu’s team found more than 380 roughly rectangular earth pits with animal skeletons. Most of them are mammals and in brick burial receptacles. Some reptiles were found in wood coffins and birds in pottery receptacles. The wide variety of wildlife sacrifice was seen as a status symbol for the Han rulers. Animal sacrifice was also found in commoners’ tombs but was limited to domesticated animals including dogs and pigs.

“From the excavation records we currently have, exotic animals and rare birds were only unearthed in the mausoleums of emperors, empresses, and empress dowagers (queen mothers). They were a symbol of status and prestige,” the researchers wrote.

It is the first time that a complete panda skeleton has been identified from an emperor’s burial site, according to scientists involved in the discovery. In 1975, the skull of a panda was unearthed in the tomb of Emperor Wen’s mother, Empress Dowager Bo, but the animal’s body was missing, possibly stolen.

The Han dynasty’s economy prospered while the population expanded under Emperor Wen, whose birth name was Liu Heng and who was known for his relative frugality compared with predecessors.

Hu said pandas were probably more widespread back then, because a warmer climate would have allowed their staple food, bamboo, to grow in forests north of the species’ current natural habitats.

“The northern slopes of Qinling Mountains had wetter and hotter forests, and the temperature at that time should be one or two degrees Celsius higher than now,” Hu told the West China City Daily newspaper.

Hu’s team also found in the tomb a complete skeleton of a Malaysian tapir. Tapirs, now listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, went extinct in China about 1,000 years ago. Because of confusing descriptions in historical records and a lack of archaeological finds, Chinese scientists struggled to prove the tapir, known as “mo” in Chinese, to be a different species from giant pandas, Hu said.

They also identified a tiger, a yak, a gayal bull indigenous to South Asia and a Himalayan takin. The remains of a rhino and a golden eagle were found in Empress Dowager Bo’s tomb.

Hu said they would carry out DNA and isotope analysis to identify what the animals ate and where they originated.