The Extinction of the Giant Ape--A Long-standing Mystery Solved--Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology
Gigantopithecus blacki, the largest hominoid that ever lived.
Limestone karst landscape in Chongzuo, southern China. The Gigantopithecus sites are located in caves in the steep-sided walls of the mountains. The mountain in the center of the picture is Mulan Mountain. The entrance of Hejiang Cave (#16 in Figure 2) is about three-quarters down from the main peak.
The reason for its extinction remained a mystery until now, when a team of researchers from Chinese, Australian and American universities have shown that extinction was almost certainly caused by climate change which deprived it of its highly specialised food - tree bark.
The story of its evolution and eventual extinction illustrates the unplanned and mindless nature of evolution by Natural Selection which has no mechanism for anticipating, let alone planning for a major event like climate change causing forest to become grasslands. There is no Plan B because there is not even a Plan A. The large size of Gigantopithecus was probably related to its diet of tree bark, which can be deduced from its teeth and jaw. A large gut being needed to digest, with the aid of bacteria and other microorganisms, a high-cellulose diet. And a large body needs a lot of food to sustain it. Compare the size of the wholly vegetarian gorilla with that of the more omnivorous chimpanzees.
The researchers have published their findings, open access, in the journal Nature and explain it in a news release from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences:
Giants once roamed the karst plains of southern China, three-metre tall apes weighing in at 250 kilograms. These very distant human ancestors – Gigantopithecus blacki – went extinct before humans arrived in the region, with few clues to why, and so far leaving around 2000 fossilised teeth and four jawbones as the only signs of their existence.Creationists who traditionally claim that scientists used a flawed radiometric dating technique will need to ignore the fact that the team used six different dating methods which all converged on a single narrow range of dates, and some of which, such as luminescence and electron-spin resonance, do not depend on radioactive decay rates.
New evidence from this region published in Nature, uncovered by a team of Chinese, Australian and US researchers, demonstrates beyond doubt that the largest primate to walk the earth went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, unable to adapt its food preferences and behaviours, and vulnerable to the changing climates which sealed its fate.
"The story of G. blacki is an enigma in palaeontology – how could such a mighty creature go extinct at a time when other primates were adapting and surviving? The unresolved cause of its disappearance has become the Holy Grail in this discipline," says palaeontologist and co-lead author Professor Yingqi ZHANG, from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"The IVPP has been excavating for G. blacki evidence in this region for over 10 years but without solid dating and a consistent environmental analysis, the cause of its extinction had eluded us."
Definitive evidence revealing the story of the giant ape’s extinction has come from a large-scale project collecting evidence from 22 cave sites spread across a wide region of Guangxi Province in southern China. The foundation of this study was the dating.
Six Australian universities contributed to the project. Macquarie University, Southern Cross University, Wollongong University and the University of Queensland used multiple techniques to date samples. Southern Cross also mapped G. blacki teeth to extract information on the apes’ behaviours. ANU and Flinders University studied the pollen and fossil bearing sediments in the cave respectively, to reconstruct the environments in which G. blacki thrived and then disappeared.It’s a major feat to present a defined cause for the extinction of a species, but establishing the exact time when a species disappears from the fossil record gives us a target timeframe for an environmental reconstruction and behaviour assessment. Without robust dating, you are simply looking for clues in the wrong places.
Associate Professor Kira Westaway, co-lead author
Geochronologist
School of Natural Sciences
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Six different dating techniques were applied to the cave sediments and fossils, producing 157 radiometric ages. These were combined with eight sources of environmental and behavioural evidence, and applied to 11 caves containing evidence of G. blacki, and also to 11 caves of a similar age range where no G. blacki evidence was found.
Luminescence dating, which measures a light-sensitive signal found in the burial sediments that encased the G. blacki fossils, was the primary technique, supported by uranium series (US) and electron-spin resonance (US-ESR) dating of the G. blacki teeth themselves.
Using detailed pollen analysis, fauna reconstructions, stable isotope analysis of the teeth and a detailed analysis of the cave sediments at a micro level, the team established the environmental conditions leading up to when G. blacki went extinct. Then, using trace element and dental microwear textural analysis (DMTA) of the apes’ teeth, the team modelled G. blacki's behaviour while it was flourishing, compared to during the species’ demise.By direct-dating the fossil remains, we confirmed their age aligns with the luminescence sequence in the sediments where they were found, giving us a comprehensive and reliable chronology for the extinction of G. blacki.
Associate Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau, co-corresponding author
Geochronologist
Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group (GARG),
Southern Cross University
Lismore, New South Wales, Australia.
"Teeth provide a staggering insight into the behaviour of the species indicating stress, diversity of food sources, and repeated behaviours," says Associate Professor Joannes-Boyau.
The findings show G. blacki went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, much earlier than previously assumed. Before this time, G. blacki flourished in a rich and diverse forest.
By 700,000 to 600,000 years ago, the environment became more variable due to the increase in the strength of the seasons, causing a change in the structure of the forest communities.
Orangutans (genus Pongo) – a close relative of G. blacki – adapted their size, behaviour and habitat preferences as conditions changed. In comparison, G. blacki relied on a less nutritious back up food source when its preferences were unavailable, decreasing the diversity of its food. The ape became less mobile, had a reduced geographic range for foraging, and faced chronic stress and dwindling numbers. "G. blacki was the ultimate specialist, compared to the more agile adapters like orangutans, and this ultimately led to its demise," says Professor ZHANG.
Associate Professor Westaway says: "With the threat of a sixth mass extinction event looming over us, there is an urgent need to understand why species go extinct. Exploring the reasons for past unresolved extinctions gives us a good starting point to understand primate resilience and the fate of other large animals, in the past and future."
They will also need to ignore that fact that the extinction of these apes meshes exactly with independent evidence of climate change and consequential change in the local flora as evidenced by pollen analysis, showing how the TOE integrates fully with other strands of scientific evidence to build a realistic picture of the history of Earth, the vast majority of which occurred before 'Creation Week' some 10,000 years ago!
More technical detail is given in the open access paper:
AbstractEvolution, which has no reverse gear, led Gigantopithecus blacki into an evolutionary cul-de-sac and extinction, so no sign there of intelligent design, although the sadistic pleasure of watching animals starve to death can't be entirely ruled out.
The largest ever primate and one of the largest of the southeast Asian megafauna, Gigantopithecus blacki1, persisted in China from about 2.0 million years until the late middle Pleistocene when it became extinct2,3,4. Its demise is enigmatic considering that it was one of the few Asian great apes to go extinct in the last 2.6 million years, whereas others, including orangutan, survived until the present5. The cause of the disappearance of G. blacki remains unresolved but could shed light on primate resilience and the fate of megafauna in this region6. Here we applied three multidisciplinary analyses—timing, past environments and behaviour—to 22 caves in southern China. We used 157 radiometric ages from six dating techniques to establish a timeline for the demise of G. blacki. We show that from 2.3 million years ago the environment was a mosaic of forests and grasses, providing ideal conditions for thriving G. blacki populations. However, just before and during the extinction window between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago there was enhanced environmental variability from increased seasonality, which caused changes in plant communities and an increase in open forest environments. Although its close relative Pongo weidenreichi managed to adapt its dietary preferences and behaviour to this variability, G. blacki showed signs of chronic stress and dwindling populations. Ultimately its struggle to adapt led to the extinction of the greatest primate to ever inhabit the Earth.
Main
Our current understanding of Gigantopithecus blacki derives from Early to Middle Pleistocene cave deposits in southern China between the Yangtze River and the South China Sea (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Information section 1). This pongine7 is considered a key member of the Early to Middle Pleistocene Gigantopithecus–Sinomastodon and Stegodon–Ailuropoda faunal zones of (sub)tropical oriental Asia, from about 2.0 million years ago (Ma) to 330 thousand years ago (ka)2,3,8,9. It is known for its unusually large molars, atypical enamel thickness, estimated body height of about 3 m and mass of 200–300 kg, making it the largest primate ever to have existed on Earth4. Despite 85 years of searching, the G. blacki fossil record is restricted to four mandibles and almost 2,000 isolated teeth with no postcranial evidence4. Its initial discovery in an apothecary shop in Hong Kong as a ‘Dragon tooth’1 initiated a search for the first in situ finds10 (Extended Data Fig. 1f) and culminated in the discovery of several cave sites in two main areas, Chongzuo and Bubing Basin, in the Guangxi ZAR province4. These sites contain crucial evidence for its survival and eventual demise.
Very few of these G. blacki sites have been dated using more than one radiometric technique; thus the timing of extinction remains uncertain11. The current timeline for its presence is 2.2 Ma (Baikong cave12) to 420–330 ka (Hejiang Cave9). During this time, G. blacki underwent morphological changes including an increase in tooth size13 and dental complexity9, seemingly indicating a dietary change in response to ecological pressure13. Reconstructions of G. blacki diet based on the dental anatomy indicate a specialized herbivore with adaptations for the consumption of abrasive food14,15, heavy mastication of fibrous food16,17 and a fruit-rich diet6,18. The diverse forest ecosystem at the time of Baikong had the capacity to support the biomass of several primate communities4 over a wide area from Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan and Hubei Provinces19. However, by the time of Hejiang, G. blacki had a dramatic range reduction to just Guangxi9,13. The reasons for this dramatic reduction and eventual extinction remain hotly disputed4 because of a lack of a regional approach, a focus on single sites and methods and an absence of behavioural4 and environmental evidence20.Fig. 1: The location of the study sites in this research.
a–c, The location of Southern China, Guangxi ZAR province and the city of Nanning (a), with the location of the Chongzuo study area marked by a large box (b) and the Bubing Basin study area marked by a smaller box (c). b, The location of the 16 cave sites analysed in the Chongzuo study area. c, The location of the six caves analysed in the Bubing Basin study area including both G. blacki-bearing and non-G. blacki-bearing caves from both regions.
Zhang, Y., Westaway, K.E., Haberle, S. et al.
The demise of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki. Nature (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06900-0
Copyright: © 2024 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
And to make matters worse for creationists (like almost every biological fact), that all happened in the long period of Earth's history that preceded 'Creation Week' and ended a good quarter of a million years before Earth existed.
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Gigantopithecus was a real primate. A few scientists believe it may have survived. One of these scientists was Grover Krantz. Dr. Kranz believed that Bigfoot or Sasquatch of the American Northwest are the living descendants of Gigantopithecus. Dr. Kranz was a well known and beloved professor. He sadly passed away from cancer in 2002.
ReplyDeleteGigantopithecus would likely have been an omnivore similar to bears and humans. It would need to eat both meat and a plant diet. Primates have a harder time surviving in cold snowy climates but obviously there are some who can do it. For a large primate to survive in such extreme climates with extreme cold in winter and extreme heat in summer is an impressive achievement. This is especially impressive when one considers that these primates are able to live without heating in winter and without air conditioning in summer. Washington state in the American Northwest can be brutally cold and snowy for part of the year and in the summer it can be as hot as the tropics! The temperature can vary from as cold as minus 40 degrees F to as high as 100 degrees F. That's as extreme a climate as it gets. How did Gigantopithecus handle such extremes, and how does Bigfoot or Sasqua5ch handle such extremes? There is also the problem of finding and catching enough food for such large mammals. They would have to spend almost all waking hours foraging and hunting for food and they would have to travel on foot for many miles a day. Obviously these creatures would need to be incredibly strong with an incredible amount of stamina.
Incidentally there are man apes or ape like creatures called Cryptids living all over the world living in forests, jungles, mountains. North America has the famous Bigfoot or Sasquatch, the Skunk Ape of the Everglades in Florida, the Fouke Monster of Arkansas, the Honey Island Swamp Monster of Louisiana. South America has the Mono Grande in Colombia and Venezuela, Africa has the 10 foot tall Pongo, Australia has the Yowie and Sumatra has the Orang Pendek, and the Himalayas has the famous Aboniable Snowman.
Sadly, the only evidence for Gigantopithecus comes from a few caves in southern China.
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