Gigantopithecus

As the forested home of Gigantopithecus rapidly changed, the ape couldn’t adapt to the expanding grasslands.

Published today in Nature, a new study combines geological dates, pollen records, and clues preserved inside fossil teeth to present a detailed timeline of when, and how, Gigantopithecus blacki went extinct.

Westaway worked to come up with more accurate dates for the sediments that Gigantopithecus fossils have been found in.

If the researchers could work out the timing, then they could better investigate what the world of Gigantopithecus might have been like—and what could have eradicated the ape.

While experts had previously speculated that Gigantopithecus was driven to extinction as their preferred forest habitats became sparser, the known fossils of the ape lacked defined dates to test the idea.