We might fancy ourselves the smartest apes to ever live, but we are certainly not the largest. That honorific goes to the Gigantopithecus blacki, a creature that likely stood nearly 10-feet-tall and weighed upwards of 660 pounds.
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00:00We might fancy ourselves the smartest apes to ever have lived, but we are certainly not the
00:08largest. That honorific goes to Gigantopithecus blackie, a creature that likely stood nearly 10
00:13feet tall and weighed upwards of 660 pounds. So what happened to this veritable gargantuan?
00:19Well, according to paleontologist Ying Kijong, it's been somewhat of a mystery,
00:23but they might finally have figured it out. Gigantopithecus went extinct between 295,000
00:28and 215,000 years ago, based on radiometric dating from the jawbone fossils and teeth we have,
00:34the only signs of the creature. It lived in what is now southern China, and based on pollen samples
00:40from the time the giant ape went extinct, researchers are beginning to divine a cause.
00:44They say that Gigantopithecus thrived in the dense forest the area was known for,
00:48but a changing climate ultimately did them in. Those dense fruit-filled forests became more sparse,
00:53with grasslands taking over many of those areas, meaning less diverse foods to eat,
00:58and fossil records indicate chronic stress as nutrition became more difficult in a changing
01:02world. And for a creature as large as Gigantopithecus was, food is always going to be number one.