The Controversy about Gigantopithecus

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The picture above is Bill Munns and his model of Gigantopithecus, or at least what he and Dr. Russell Ciochon believe the Gigantopithecus may have looked like. According to Dr. Ciochon Gigantopithecus stood ten feet tall and weighed in at twelve hundred pounds. None of this information can be verified however, as only a few jaw fragments and a couple hundred teeth have been found. The way that Dr. Ciochon designed what he believed this large ape looked like was to reconstruct the head from similar looking primate skulls. For more information of the fossil records please see below. He then looked at the total size of the skull and tried to determine the body mass based upon primate body to head mass ratios. The normal head to body ratio is considered 1:8, which happens to be the ratio for the Australopithecus afarensis, or Lucy. The picture to the left is a that of what Lucy and her mate may have looked like. The little girl sitting next to the model on the left is about the size of the male of the Australopithecus afarensis. The female is the small of the two hold to infant. For Gigantopithecus blacki a new ratio was needed due to the shear size of the mandible found. So the reconstruction team came up with 1:6.5 ratio. Gigantopithecus is the last species of that evolutionary line. If this line is traced back to Sivapithecus, who is also the ancestor of the modern day Orangutan, then we have some idea what Gigantopithecus may look like. But Orangutans have been know to be tree dwellers from time to time and this troubled Dr. Ciochon. A ten foot tall and half a ton animal would have great difficulty in trees. So he looked to both the modern day Gorilla and the extinct giant Baboon. Bill Munns used this to help him create the model of Gigantopithecus which he is pictured with in the top left. Bill Munns is a Hollywood monster maker who helped to create the model. If you look at the two pictures on the right side of this page you will see a large Gorilla-like ape that looks very different from the picture of Munn's creature. Elwyn Simons and Peter Ettel believe that Gigantopithecus does not share a common ancestor with the Orangutan. They trace the Orangutan lineage back to dryopithicine origins, and because of this they think is that Gigantopithecus looks more like a giant gorilla which would be about nine feet tall and six hundred pounds in weight. It is difficult to trace the evolutionary lineage of any animal when all we have to study are a few small clues about what it looked like, what it ate, and how it evolved.

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Fossil Records

The main problem that comes into play when dealing with the fossil records of the Gigantopithecus is the fact that the only evidence we have that they existed is the bone fragment from the jaw that you see in the picture to the left. The recreation of the skull to the right is a collaborative work and is based upon several different factors. The skull is based on that of a current day Gorilla. As shown in the picture below. For more information on the appearance of Gigantopithecus please click here. Many anthropologist blame Chinese apothecaries for a lack of fossil remains of the Gigantopithecus. For centuries apothecaries have used what they consider dragon's teeth to help make their remedies. What they consider dragon's teeth, anthropologist would refer to as fossils. The dental formula for the lower jaw of the Gigantopithecus is 2:1:2:3, there has been no discovery of the up jaw. There have been several findings of teeth of the Gigantopithecus, which has caused some problems. The teeth seem to come in two very distinct sizes. It is believed that the males of the species were sizably larger than the females of the species. The jaw is comprised of lower incisors that are small and vertical, canines that are relatively short and thick, and lower anterior premolars that are broad. The teeth in Gigantopithecus have a thick layer of enamel. The teeth have visible cusps which are low and flat, accessory cups can also been seen in the teeth. The jaw of the species is deep and thick. All these signs indicate that the animal was a herbivore. Judging from the fact that the animal inhabited part of southeastern Asia it is believed that the animal fed mostly on bamboo. However, tests have hinted at the fact that the animal may have fed mostly on fruits. These tests are based on phytoliths found on the teeth. Phytoliths are silicon that some plants produce that line the cells of the plants. The finding of the tests are heavily argued do to the fact that only four teeth were tested and out of those only two of teeth indicated that the species ate bamboo and only one of those had indications that the animal even ate fruit. There are only two facts that are agreed upon when it comes to Gigantopithecus; the first is that Gigantopithecus had a lower mandible, and the second is that we need more information.

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