Hundreds of thousands of years ago, great giant apes of the Gigantopithecus species lived in China and Southeast Asia Gigantopithecus blacki.
These animals, which could be up to three meters long and weigh up to 250 kilograms, became extinct before humans came to live in their area.
All that remains of them are a set of fossilized teeth and jaws, which scientists from China, Australia and the United States have now carefully studied to explain the circumstances of the gigantopithecus’ extinction.
Yingqi Zhang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences writes with co-authors in the journal Nature that these largest primates of all time disappeared from the earth between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago.
It is useful to know this time, because then there is more hope of tracing the causes of the extinction. Previously it was thought that Gigantopithecus lived much later, until about one hundred thousand years ago.
The extinction of Gigantopithecus has left scientists with many doubts, because other primates, including close relatives of Gigantopithecus orangutans, have survived wonderfully to the climatic and environmental changes that occurred in the same period.
Over the course of ten years, Zhang and his colleagues collected research material from 22 caves in southern China where gigantopithecus once lived.
In addition to the teeth and jaws, they also collected and analyzed the soil material that contained the fossils and old pollen found there. They determined the age of the fossils and soil using six different methods.
Based on all this information, they found out what kind of environmental conditions prevailed in the Gigantopithecus area before their extinction.
Based on the chemical elements and small signs of wear found on the teeth, they drew conclusions about what these animals ate and where they obtained their food.
About 700,000 to 600,000 years ago, environmental conditions in East Asia became more variable than before.
While orangutans, for example, adapted relatively easily to new conditions, gigantopithecus could not find a sufficiently healthy substitute for their favorite foods, which had become rare. They became more sedentary, their foraging trips became shorter and they suffered from stress.
Zhang and his co-authors believe that it was specialization and lack of adaptability that became fatal for these great apes.
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2024-01-11 02:47:00
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