Legend of Gigantopithecus ''The Giant Ape''

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Posted by Extinction Blog

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Gigantopithecus ("giant ape") is an extinct genus of ape that existed from perhaps nine million years to as recently as one hundred thousand years ago, in what is now China, India, and Vietnam.

This places Gigantopithecus in the same time frame and geographical location as several hominin species.

There are presently three extinct named species of Gigantopithecus: G. blacki, G. bilaspurensis, and G. giganteus.

The primate fossil record suggests that the species Gigantopithecus blacki were the largest known primates that ever lived, standing up to 3 m (9.8 ft), and weighing up to 540?600 kg (1,190?1,320 lb).

The first Gigantopithecus remains described by an anthropologist were found in 1935 by Ralph von Koenigswald in an apothecary shop.

Relatively few fossils of Gigantopithecus have been recovered.

Aside from the molars recovered in Chinese traditional medicine shops, Liucheng Cave in Liuzhou, China, has produced numerous Gigantopithecus blacki teeth, as well as several jawbones.

Other sites yielding significant finds were in Vietnam and India. These finds suggest that the range of Gigantopithecus was in Southeast Asia.

By 1958, three mandibles and more than 1,300 teeth had been recovered. Gigantopithecus remains have come from sites in Hubei, Guangxi, and Sichuan, from warehouses for Chinese medicinal products, as well as from cave deposits.

In 2014, for the first time, fossil teeth and mandible of Gigantopithecus blacki were found in Indonesia.

Some of the caves in which teeth have been found were not caves yet at the time the apes lived, but just fissures.

It has been suggested that Gigantopithecus bones were brought there by porcupines, who chew on bones as a source of calcium. This may explain the lack of Gigantopithecus bones today.

Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis (G. bilaspuresis) is a very large fossil ape identified from a few jaw bones and teeth from India. This species lived about 6 to 9 million years ago in the Miocene. It is related to G. blacki.

Dating to roughly five million years before G. blacki, a separate species, Gigantopithecus giganteus (G. giganteus), is known from extremely fragmentary remains from northern India and China.

Based on the fossil evidence, adult male Gigantopithecus blacki are believed to have stood about 3 m (9.8 ft) tall and weighed as much as 540?600 kg (1,190?1,320 lb).

This makes the species three to four times as heavy as modern gorillas and seven to eight times as heavy as the orangutan, its closest living relative. Large males may have had an armspan of over 3.6 m (11.8 ft).

The species was highly sexually dimorphic, with adult females roughly half the weight of males.

It possibly resembled modern gorillas, because of its supposedly similar lifestyle. Some scientists, however, think it probably looked more like its closest modern relative, the orangutan.

Based on the size estimates, Gigantopithecus possibly had few or no enemies when fully grown.

However, younger, weak, or injured individuals may have been vulnerable to predation by big cats, large constrictor snakes, crocodiles, machairodonts, hyenas, and Homo erectus.

The genus lived in Asia and probably inhabited bamboo forests, since its fossils are often found alongside those of extinct ancestors of the giant panda.

Most evidence points to Gigantopithecus being a herbivore.

Gigantopithecus may have become extinct approximately 100,000 years ago because the climate change during the Pleistocene era changed the plants from forest to savanna, and the food supply, fruits, decreased.