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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00:03 We might fancy ourselves the smartest apes to ever have
00:06 lived, but we are certainly not the largest.
00:09 That honorific goes to Gigantopithecus blacki,
00:11 a creature that likely stood nearly 10 feet tall
00:14 and weighed upwards of 660 pounds.
00:17 So what happened to this veritable gargantuan?
00:19 Well, according to paleontologist Ying-Ki Zhang,
00:22 it's been somewhat of a mystery.
00:23 But they might finally have figured it out.
00:25 Gigantopithecus went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000
00:30 years ago, based on radiometric dating from the jawbone fossils
00:33 and teeth we have, the only signs of the creature.
00:36 It lived in what is now southern China.
00:38 And based on pollen samples from the time
00:40 the giant ape went extinct, researchers
00:42 are beginning to divine a cause.
00:44 They say that Gigantopithecus thrived in the dense forest
00:47 the area was known for.
00:48 But a changing climate ultimately did them in.
00:51 Those dense, fruit-filled forests
00:52 became more sparse, with grasslands
00:54 taking over many of those areas, meaning less diverse foods
00:57 to eat.
00:58 And fossil records indicate chronic stress
01:00 as nutrition became more difficult in a changing world.
01:03 And for a creature as large as Gigantopithecus was,
01:05 food is always going to be number one.
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01:12 (bells chiming)