Apes that maintained a vegetarian diet are having difficulty supplying food due to changes in the forest environment.
A study has shown that a giant ape that once lived in southern China, reaching a height of 3 meters and weighing 300 kg, may have become extinct due to its inability to adapt to environmental changes.
According to the Associated Press in the United States on the 10th (local time), a research team from Australia’s Southern Cross University published in the scientific journal ‘Nature’ that the species ‘Gigantopithecus Blacki’, an ape that lived in southern China, lost food due to environmental changes hundreds of thousands of years ago. Research results have been published showing that they may have become extinct due to shortages.
Renault Joannes, a researcher at Southern Cross University and co-author of the study, said, “In a situation where there was a shortage of food due to environmental changes, they would not have been able to climb up trees and eat fruit from tall trees.”
These giant apes, similar to modern-day orangutans, lived on the plains of China’s Guangxi region for about 2 million years. It is known that until the environment changed, they maintained a vegetarian diet, eating fruits and flowers in the tropical rainforest.
The research team analyzed pollen, sediments, and tooth fossils excavated from caves in the Guangxi region and explained that fruit production in the forest decreased about 600,000 years ago as the dry season became longer.
The study found that while smaller apes may have been able to climb trees and find other sources of food, such as fruit, giant apes, such as Gigantopithecus blaaki, consumed more of less nutritious sources such as tree bark and reeds.
“As the forest environment changed, the preferred prey of great apes continued to decline,” said co-author Yingqi Zhang of the China Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Most of the information known to date about this species of great ape comes from studying fossil teeth and four mandibles discovered in southern China. No fossil that perfectly maintains the form of a great ape has yet been discovered.
Fossil analyzes show that dozens of ape species lived in Africa, Europe, and Asia about 2 to 22 million years ago. Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, said, “The first humans appeared in Africa, but it is not yet known which continent the first apes appeared on.”
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.