Gigantopithecus
| Gigantopithecus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
.JPG)
Lower jaw of Gigantopithecus |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Miocene to Pleistocene | ||||||||||||
| 8 to 0.3 (to 0.1?) Million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gigantopithecus | ||||||||||||
| von Koenigswald , 1935 | ||||||||||||
| species | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Gigantopithecus is an extinct species of primates from the family of the apes (Hominidae). The fossils aredatedto the Upper Miocene and Middle Pleistocene . Finds from northern India and Pakistan ( Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis ) are 8 to 7 million years old,whereasfinds from China ( Gigantopithecus blacki ) are less than 2 million years old; individual Chinese finds have been dated to only 400,000 to 320,000 years and even to only 100,000 years.
Naming
Gigantopithecus is an artificial word . The name of the genus is derived from the Greek words πίθηκος ( pronounced píthēkos in ancient Greek ): "monkey" and γίγας gígas "giant". The epithet of the type species, Gigantopithecus blacki , honors the physician and paleoanthropologist Davidson Black , who died in 1934 , "whose fundamental work on Sinanthropus will secure him a lasting memory, and who, unfortunately, was no longer allowed to complete his work." Means Gigantopithecus blacki thus correspondingly "Black's giant monkey".
Initial description
Holotype of the species and also the type species Gigantopithecus blacki is a right, rear molar (M2) from the lower jaw , which the German paleontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald 1935 along with several hundred orangutan -Zähnen in Hong Kong in pharmacies for traditional Chinese medicine purchased would have. At that time, fossils known as dragon bones were ground into powder in China because they were said to have healing properties. In the same year von Koenigswald published the first description of the genus Gigantopithecus, which he had just introduced, only a few lines in length .
Koenigswald noticed the molar because it is far larger than all orangutan teeth and clearly differentiated from them by a much coarser crown relief . The tooth was also larger than the corresponding one on a gorilla , but it was badly chewed; its greatest length is 22 millimeters and its greatest width 18 millimeters. The molar is not only completely lacking the strong enamel wrinkles typical of monkeys, notes von Koenigswald in the first description, it is also characterized by a peculiar overdevelopment of secondary cusps that give it a somewhat strange appearance for a primate tooth. However, if you draw a diagram of the tooth, it turns out that it is the same secondary bumps that can also appear in the orangutang. The molar has a typical tuberculum acces. med. internally.
By 1939, von Koenigswald discovered three more individual Gigantopithecus teeth in Chinese pharmacies.
Other finds and features
In the 1950s, Chinese researchers looked for Gigantopithecus teeth at the - at least locally - known sites of discovery of "dragon bones" in order to be able to date them. They found what they were looking for in the southern Chinese Karst landscapes, with around a thousand Gigantopithecus teeth and three jaw fragments being recovered from the Liucheng Cave (柳城) in Guangxi alone . In 1956 a complete lower jaw was discovered . Other finds come from northern India and Pakistan. Since some finds were made in the vicinity of fossil panda bears , it was initially assumed that Gigantopithecus also fed on bamboo , especially since the large teeth and powerful jaws could be interpreted as an adaptation to chewing hard vegetable food. Investigations of the tooth enamel , which were published at the end of 2015, however, showed that Gigantopithecus - comparable to an orangutan - mainly fed on other leaves and fruits and - unlike a panda bear - did not specialize in bamboo. At the same time, the authors of the study speculated about the reasons for the extinction of Gigantopithecus : Since the forests disappeared during the Ice Age phases of the Pleistocene and were replaced by more open savannas , this could have resulted in a reduced food supply. While the ancestors of humans living in Africa at the same time adopted grasses and roots as food, which were also abundant in the Asian savannas, Gigantopithecus apparently did not adapt quickly enough to the changing environment.
No final statements can be made about size and weight at the moment, as only jaw elements and teeth have been found so far. However, these are significantly larger than their counterparts in living great apes.
According to some scientists, Gigantopithecus was more than ten feet tall , making it the largest great ape that ever lived. According to this, he would have weighed more than 500 kg - comparable to a full-grown polar bear . Another estimate, however, assumes significantly smaller sizes. This estimate is based on the correlation between the gorilla mandible and long gorilla tubular bones ; Based on this correlation, the presumed length of the Gigantopithecus tubular bones was inferred , with the result that these tubular bones were 20 to 25% longer than those of gorillas. With similar proportions, this would correspond to a height of about 180 cm.
Tribal classification
The closest fossil relatives of Gigantopithecus was probably the much smaller Sivapithecus , who lived in Southeastern Europe , Asia and Africa . The closest relative still alive today has long been the orangutan; In 2019, this assumption was substantiated with the help of fossil proteins . Experts working in the field of paleoproteomics in Denmark obtained samples of tooth enamel from an almost 1.9 million year old molar tooth from China and reconstructed several Gigantopihecus blacki proteins from them . The reconstructions were compared with the proteins of other great ape species registered there using the entries in protein databases. It emerged that Gigantopithecus is a sister taxon of the orangutans (genus Pongo ) and that the last common ancestor of Gigantopithecus and orangutan lived 12 to 10 million years ago.
Trivia
In 1985, the American anthropologist Grover Krantz tried to get the humanoid cryptid known as Bigfoot of North American folklore scientifically recognized as Gigantopithecus blacki . The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature refused, however, because the taxon was already taken and Krantz could not produce a holotype.
literature
- Colin Barras: Hunting for the greatest of apes. In: New Scientist . Volume 230, No. 3074, 2016, pp. 34-37, doi: 10.1016 / S0262-4079 (16) 30905-8
- Russell L. Ciochon , John Olsen, Jamie James: Why Did Giganto Have to Die? In search of the giant monkey from prehistoric times. Georg Westermann Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-07-509600-8 .
Web links
- From the Teeth of the Dragon - Gigantopithecus blacki.
- Why "King Kong" died out. On: spiegel.de from January 5, 2016
Individual evidence
- ↑ Giant Asian Ape and Humans Coexisted, Might Have Interacted. On: nationalgeographic.com of December 8, 2005
- ↑ Yingqi Zhang et al .: New 400-320 ka Gigantopithecus blacki remains from Hejiang Cave, Chongzuo City, Guangxi, South China. In: Quaternary International. Volume 354, 2014, pp. 35-45, doi: 10.1016 / j.quaint.2013.12.008 .
- ↑ a b Hervé Bocherens et al .: Flexibility of diet and habitat in Pleistocene South Asian mammals: Implications for the fate of the giant fossil ape Gigantopithecus. In: Quaternary International. Volume 434, Part A, 2017, pp. 148–155, doi: 10.1016 / j.quaint.2015.11.059 .
-
↑ Giant ape lived alongside humans. On: eurekalert.org of November 10, 2005.
Gigantopithecus. On: welt.de from December 14, 2005. - ↑ a b Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald: A fossil mammal fauna with Simia from southern China. NV Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij, Amsterdam 1935, pp. 871–879, full text (PDF) .
- ^ Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald : Encounters with the pre-humans. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, dtv Volume 269, Munich 1965, p. 57 f.
- ↑ a b c Colin Barras: Hunting for the greatest of apes. In: New Scientist . Volume 230, No. 3074, 2016, pp. 34-37, doi: 10.1016 / S0262-4079 (16) 30905-8
- ↑ Wenzhong Pei: 柳城 巨猿 洞 的 发掘 和 广西 其他 山洞 的 探查 ( Excavation of Liucheng Gigantopithecus Cave and Exploration of Other Caves in Kwangsi. ) Beijing, 1965.
- ↑ Earth's largest ever ape died out because it refused to eat its greens - study. In: The Guardian . January 5, 2015, accessed January 5, 2015.
- ↑ King Kong was inflexible. Giant ape died out 100,000 years ago due to a lack of adaptation. On: idw-online from January 4, 2015.
- ↑ The ape that was. Asian fossils reveal humanity's giant cousin. ( Memento of March 1, 2012 on the Internet Archive ) Description (with illustrations) on the website of Russell L. Ciochon , Professor of Anthropology, University of Iowa.
- ^ AE Johnson, Jr .: Skeletal Estimates of Gigantopithecus based on a Gorilla analogy. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 8, No. 6, 1979, pp. 585-587, doi: 10.1016 / 0047-2484 (79) 90111-8 . Quoted from: Parker Dickson: Gigantopithecus: A Reapprisal of Dietary Habits . In: Totem: The University of Western Ontario Journal of Anthropology . Volume 11, No. 1, June 21, 2011.
-
↑ Frido Welker et al .: Enamel proteome shows that Gigantopithecus was an early diverging pongine. In: Nature . Volume 576, 2019, pp. 262-265, doi: 10.1038 / s41586-019-1728-8 .
Oldest molecular information to date illuminates the history of extinct Gigantopithecus. In: EurekAlert! November 13, 2019, accessed November 16, 2019 . Magdalena Schmude: News from science: A gigantic prehistoric monkey was a direct relative of the orangutan. In: Deutschlandfunk broadcast “ Research Current ”. November 14, 2019, accessed on November 16, 2019 (also as mp3 audio , 4.3 MB, 4: 423 minutes).
- ^ Brian Regal: Entering Dubious Realms: Grover Krantz, Science, and Sasquatch. Archived from the original on March 6, 2012. In: Annals of Science . 66, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 83-102. doi : 10.1080 / 00033790802202421 . PMID 19831199 . Accessed November 28, 2015.