2024-01-10 19:56:57
Standing three meters tall, the Gigantopithecus monkey flourished for a long time in the forests of Asia before being wiped off the face of the Earth more than 200,000 years ago, failing to adapt to changing conditions. its environment, according to a study published in the journal Nature (New window) (in English).
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A group of Gigantopithecus blacki in a forest in southern China. (Artistic illustration)
Photo: Southern Cross University/Garcia/Joannes-Boyau
The extinction of the largest primate of all time – 3 meters, 200 to 300 kilos – was one of the great enigmas of paleontology since the discovery of the first traces of the beast in the 1930s.
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A fossilized mandible of Gigantopithecus blacki.
Photo: Wei Wang/Theis Jensen
Gigantopithecus blacki left behind only a few jaws and teeth, found by the hundreds in caves in Guangxi province, in southern China.
But despite ten years of excavations, scientists might not determine when and why the species had become extinct, explains Professor Yingqi Zhang, of the Institute of Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, co-author of the study.
Rather than investigating site by site, a team of Chinese, Australian and American scientists worked on a set of 22 caves in China – some of which had never been excavated before – containing fossilized teeth: some of the oldest, dating back 2 million years ago, to the most recent, around 250,000 years ago.
They combined six different dating methods, including luminescence analysis of sediments, which allows us to know when these deposits were last exposed to daylight. But also the dating of pollens, valuable clues to the evolution of vegetation, all in order to have a complete chronology of the environment of each site, including those where Gigantopithecus blacki no longer appeared, explains Professor Joannes-Boyau, expert in geochemistry.
Their results made it possible to determine a window of extinction for the species: between 295,000 years and 215,000 years ago. This corresponds to a vast period of glacial cycles called the Middle Pleistocene, where the planet experienced global cooling.
Consequence: in the lush tropical forests where the colossus thrived, more contrasting seasons transformed the vegetation and led to periods of fruit shortage, says researcher Kira Westaway, of Macquarie University in Australia, also a co-author.
Its excessive size hampered the agility necessary to find more varied resources. This handicap has only gotten worse because surprisingly, its size has increased over time, notes Kira Westaway.
Suffering from chronic, long-term stress – which can be seen in the teeth – the population gradually declined and the species eventually became extinct.
Conversely, its orangutan contemporaries of the species Pongo willow richiclose to Gigantopithecus, have persisted: smaller, more agile, they were able to move in the canopy to gather a variety of foods (leaves, nuts, insects, small mammals, etc.). A saving versatility which grew stronger as their size decreased over time.
Gigantopithecus was not the only Pleistocene megafauna to disappear. According to Kira Westaway, exploring these unresolved extinctions allows us to understand the mechanisms of resilience in large animals, in the past and in the future, while the threat of a sixth mass extinction since the appearance of life looms.
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