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Mystery of giant ape solved - 2nd February 2024

New research has shown that the largest primate ever to exist may have died of stress and a failure to adapt to environmental change.

At a height of three metres and weighing 300 kilograms, ‘Gigantopithecus' once roamed throughout the forests of southern Asia. Dying out around 200,000 years ago, its disappearance has remained one of the unsolved mysteries of ancient life.

A giant tooth, four times greater than that belonging to any other primate, was discovered in the 1930s, on sale as a ‘dragon's tooth'. Since then, despite unearthing around 2,000 similar teeth, scientists have failed to come up with a valid reason as to why Gigantopithecus vanished.

Professor Zhang Yingqi, from China's Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology, was a co-author of the report. The research involved numerous techniques, such as a reconstruction of the ape's habitat before, during and after it became extinct.

Zhang Yingqi: "The cause of Gigantopithecus’s extinction is mainly the stress. Because when the environments changed, the food that Gigantopithecus preferred became less, and less, less, I mean the variety, both the variety and the quantity became less. So Gigantopithecus didn’t have enough food, preferred food to eat."

Differing from the orangutan, which is a close cousin, Gigantopithecus' size limited the distance it could cover to seek an alternative food source. Professor Zhang's theory is that the choice to cope with closer but less nutritious food, caused the collapse of the species.

Zhang Yingqi: "So he made a huge mistake by relying on the fall-back food, which is a very fibrous and less nutritious food. So, the population experienced, experienced, experienced chronic long-term stress. So the population became smaller and smaller and finally he went extinct."

Experiencing another era of extreme climate change, Gigantopithecus' fate serves as a warning.