BEIJING –  China's beloved national symbol -- the panda -- may have been seen quite differently by ancient humans: as food.

Scientist Wei Guangbiao says prehistoric man ate pandas in an area that is now part of the city of Chongqing in southwest China.

Wei, head of the Institute of Three Gorges Paleoanthropology at a Chongqing museum, says many excavated panda fossils "showed that pandas were once slashed to death by man."

The Chongqing Morning Post quoted him Friday as saying: "In primitive times, people wouldn't kill animals that were useless to them" and therefore the pandas must have been used as food....