They managed to explain why the largest ape that ever lived on Earth became extinct

Giants once roamed the karst plains of southern China. They were monkeys three meters tall and weighing 250 kilograms. These very distant primate relatives, Gigantopithecus blackii, went extinct before humans arrived in the region, with little clue as to why, and the only signs of their existence so far are about 2,000 fossilized teeth and four jaws. Are left.

By: Infobay

The new evidence, recently published in Nature, was discovered by a team of Chinese, Australian and American researchers and leaves no doubt that the largest primate to ever live on Earth went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, due to its inability to adapt. because of. Food preferences and behavior and sensitive to changing climate.

“Yes. Blackie’s story is a puzzle in paleontology: How could such a powerful creature go extinct at a time when other primates were adapting and surviving? The unresolved cause of their disappearance has become the holy grail of the discipline, said co-senior author Professor Yingqi Zhang, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP).

That institute has been searching for evidence in the area for more than 10 years, but without solid dating and consistent environmental analysis, the cause of its extinction was beyond experts’ understanding.

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