© Provided by AFP An undated picture provided by the Press Office of the Senckenberg Research Institute on January 4, 2016, shows a large molar of Gigantopithecus from the collection of Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald
The largest ape to roam Earth died out 100,000 years ago because it failed to tuck into savannah grass after climate change hit its preferred diet of forest fruit, scientists suggest.
Gigantopithecus — the closest Nature ever came to producing a real King Kong — weighed five times as much as an adult man and probably stood three metres (nine feet) tall, according to sketchy estimates.
In its heyday a million years ago, it inhabited semi-tropical forests in southern China and mainland Southeast Asia.
Until now, though, almost nothing was known about the giant’s anatomical shape or habits.
The only fossil records are four partial lower jaws, and perhaps a thousand teeth — the first of which turned up in the 1930s in Hong Kong apothecaries where they were sold as “dragon’s teeth.”
These meagre remains “are clearly insufficient to say if the animal was bipedal or quadrupedal, and what would be its body proportions,” Herve Bocherens, a researcher at Tübingen University in Germany, told AFP.
Its closest modern cousin is the orangutan, but whether Gigantopithecus had the same golden-red hue, or was black like a gorilla is unknown.
An undated picture provided by the Press Office of the Senckenberg Research Institute on January 4, 2016, shows examined tooth of Gigantopithecus from Thailand.
© Provided by AFP An undated picture provided by the Press Office of the Senckenberg Research Institute on January 4, 2016, shows examined tooth of Gigantopithecus from Thailand
Another mystery: its diet. Was it a meat-eater or a vegetarian? Did it share a taste for bamboo with its neighbour the prehistoric giant panda?
Answering this riddle might also tell us why a monster that surely had little to fear from other fauna went extinct.
– Adapt or die –
That’s where the teeth had a story to tell.
Examining slight variations in carbon isotopes found in tooth enamel, Bocherens and an international team of scientists showed that the primordial King Kong lived only in the forest, was a strict vegetarian, and probably wasn’t crazy about bamboo.
These narrow preferences did not pose a problem for Gigantopithecus until Earth was struck by a massive ice age during the Pleistocene Epoch, which stretched from about 2.6 million to 12,000 years ago.
That’s when Nature, evolution — and perhaps a refusal to try new foods — conspired to doom the giant ape, Bocherens explained.
“Due to its size, Gigantopithecus presumably depended on a large amount of food,” he said.
“When during the Pleistocene, more and more forested area turned into savannah landscapes, there was simply an insufficient food supply.”
And yet, according to the study, other apes and early humans in Africa that had comparable dental gear were able to survive similar transitions by eating the leaves, grass and roots offered by their new environments.
But for some reason, Asia’s giant ape — which was probably too heavy to climb trees, or swing in their branches — did not make the switch.
“Gigantopithecus probably did not have the same ecological flexibility and possibly lacked the physiological ability to resist stress and food shortage,” notes the study, which is to be published in a specialist journal, Quaternary International.
Whether the mega-ape could have adapted to a changing world but didn’t, or whether it was doomed by climate and its genes, is probably one mystery that will never be solved.
Climate change several hundred thousand years ago was also likely responsible for the disappearance of many other large animals from the Asians continent.
Gabriel H
That’s a heck of a stretch to say that gigantopithicus died out (likely) due to an inability or refusal to try new food. It’s not like climate change in its environment happened overnight, leaving them standing around on a Tuesday morning in a panic…
And what creature would not turn to alternative food sources when required for survival…
Just my opinion but the logic does not seem sound
Brenda G
I agree with Gabriel that the logic does not seem sound. To me, it sounds like personal opinion being considered as scientific fact. In my opinion, Gigantopithicus did not die off. It adapted or adjusted it’s appetite and still lives among us.Too much of a stretch to think an animal would have the inability, or would refuse to look for new food sources when starving. Starving and too lazy to look for food?
tim c
More like 4000 years ago and may never have died out
Michael D
Agree, there are large leaps in logic to draw conclusions here.
Who needs to study teeth though when there are living specimens to find today.
Only seems safe for science to investigate when one starts by saying definitively that nothing similar could have lasted until today.
Michael K
From China to the land bridge to Alaska isnt that far. I think he migrated and shrunk. Not necessarily in that order. Horsies led the way.
Morgan P
Big tooth, big ape, extinct maybe. I think this ape or a relative is still roaming around
Katherine D
Does this appear to be fossilized? NO, it doesn’t and if they can measure qualities/quantities of isotopes in the tooth, well then it is not fossilized, as far as I know fossilization replaces the existing none with minerals. So if this is not fossilized then how old is it?
I don’t think Chinese would be grinding up fossils for their medicine. It would be the same as grinding up a hard rock
Indignico
Although isn’t there some actual evidence that at least once climate change did happen literally overnight? The evidence I’m half-remembering is that there were some Mammoth carcasses discovered under the frozen tundra of somewhere currently tundra-coated and those Mammoth bodies were found with undigested green leafy bits of whatever flowering plant they’d been eating when they were apparently flash frozen by a very sudden and extreme climate change… They not only didn’t have time to mosey on down south for the winter, they didn’t even have time to swallow their mouthfuls of warm-climate salad fixins before they were killed and frozen solid by an anomalously rapid climate change. I can’t remember enough of the specifics to convince anyone this happened who hadn’t already heard of it too but maybe one of those hypothetical others will back me up with some cold hard facts too.
PATRICK
Perhaps a massive upper atmospheric down-draft (collapse). Certainly interesting. Our dynamic earth.