Massive 'King Kong' Ape May Have Gone Extinct Due to Climate Change

The largest ape in the world may have met its untimely demise due to climate change. The ten-foot-tall Gigantopithecus apes apparently became extinct after fruit-bearing trees were replaced by savannahs.

The largest ape died out about 100,000 years ago. However, it was at its height about a million years ago, when it inhabited semi-tropical forests in southern China and mainland south-east Asia. The ape weighed about five times as much as an average adult male, and stood at a height that would dwarf others today.

Until now, though, very little was known about the ape. The only fossil records that remained of the animal were four partial lower jaws and about a thousand teeth. The first of these turned up in the 1930s in Hong Kong apothecaries and were marketed as "dragon's teeth."

These remains aren't enough to tell whether the animals were bipedal or quadrupedal. However, its closest modern cousin is the orangutan, which may hint at a quadrupedal lifestyle.

In this latest study, the researchers took a closer look at the teeth in order to find out a bit more about what the giant ape might have eaten and why it died out.

They found that the large primates only lived in the forest and obtained food from this habitat. It was also an exclusive vegetarian, but did not specialize on bamboo or other grasses. Because of its size, though, it was likely too heavy to scale trees like its modern descendants, which means that it couldn't reach food at heights. It's likely the animal's size, in combination with its restriction to one habitat type, eventually doomed the ape.

"Relatives of the giant ape, such as the recent orangutan, have been able to survive despite their specialization on a certain habitat," said Herve Bocherens, one of the researchers, in an interview with the Daily Mail. "However, orangutans have a slow metabolism and are able to survive on limited food. Due to its size, Gigantopithecus presumably depended on a large amount of food. When during the Pleistocene era more and more forested areas turned into savanna landscapes, there was simply an insufficient food supply for the giant ape."

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