Gigantopithecus, the giant ape
A three-metre relative of the orangutan lives in Southeast Asian forests alongside Homo erectus.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.2 million years
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Gigantopithecus blacki is known almost entirely from teeth and jaws, first identified in 1935 among fossil teeth sold in Hong Kong pharmacies as dragon bones. Estimates put it at up to three metres tall and several hundred kilograms, the largest primate ever. Protein sequencing has confirmed it as a relative of the orangutan. Recent dating places its extinction between about 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, apparently as its forest habitat fragmented into grassland it could not exploit.