WASHINGTON (AP) — An ancient species of great ape likely went extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago when climate change put its favorite fruits out of reach during dry seasons, scientists reported Wednesday.
The species Gigantopithecus blacki, which once lived in southern China, is the largest great ape known to scientists — measuring 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighing up to 650 pounds (295 kg).
But its size may also have been a weakness.
“It's just a huge animal, it's really huge,” said Reno Guan Puyao, a researcher at Australia's Southern Cross University and co-author of the published study. In the journal Nature. “When food starts to become scarce, they become too large to climb trees to explore new food sources.”
The giant apes, which likely resemble modern orangutans, lived for about two million years in the forest plains of China's Guangxi region. They followed a vegetarian diet, eating fruits and flowers in the tropical forests, until the environment began to change.
The researchers analyzed pollen and sediment samples preserved in Guangxi caves, as well as fossil teeth, to reveal how forests produced fewer fruits starting around 600,000 years ago, as the region experienced more dry seasons.
The researchers found that giant apes did not disappear quickly, but likely became extinct sometime between 215,000 and 295,000 years ago.
While small apes may have been able to climb trees to forage for different foods, the researchers' analysis shows that giant apes ate more tree bark, reeds and other non-nutritious foods.
“When the forest changed, there was not enough food for these species to prefer,” said co-author Zhang Yingke of the China Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Most of what scientists know about extinct great apes comes from studying fossil teeth and four large lower jaw bones, all found in southern China. No complete skeletons have been found.
Fossil records show that between about 2 million and 22 million years ago, dozens of species of great apes inhabited Africa, Europe, and Asia. Today, only gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans remain.
While the first humans appeared in Africa, scientists don't know on which continent the great ape family first appeared, said Rick Potts, who directs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study.
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