Reason for Great Ape death found - 2nd February 2024

At three metres high, ‘Gigantopithecus' weighed 300 kilograms. It lived in the forests of south Asia but then, around 200,000 years ago, this giant ape died. The reason has been a mystery, but a recent report has finally found out why.

The story started when a huge tooth was found in the 1930s. It was four times bigger than a normal ape's tooth. Since then, scientists have discovered around 2,000 teeth. However, dinosaur experts still have few answers about why the creature died.

One author of the report was Professor Zhang Yingqi. He and his team did some research about the animal's environment – what it was like before, during and after Gigantopithecus disappeared.

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."

And the solution to the mystery was climate change. The ape was too large to move far for other food so, it ate the unhealthy food nearby. The result of this was that Gigantopithecus died.

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."

Today, Gigantopithecus' story reminds us of the dangers of climate change.