Posted on 12/09/2005 11:40:31 AM PST by Red Badger
Stalking through the forest, an early human hunter might have glimpsed an oversize ape through a thicket of bamboo.
We may never know the outcome of such a prehistoric encounter—or even if a meeting occurred. The mysterious ape, called Gigantopithecus blacki, has long since vanished from the Earth, and so has the early human species.
But researchers have determined that the giant ape—which might have been the closest thing to a real King Kong—did in fact live at the same time and in roughly the same place as early humans.
In China 300,000 years ago the two species might well have crossed paths, according to W. Jack Rink of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Big Mystery
A German paleontologist discovered Gigantopithecus in 1935 when he picked up a strange, heavy tooth in a Chinese apothecary. It was labeled as a "dragon tooth."
Since then researchers have found additional remains of the ape, which they've used to make guesses about its size, diet, and when and how it lived. But experts are still left with many unanswered questions.
"We're sort of dealing with the mystery ape," said Rick Potts, a paleoanthropologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
"We know so little about Gigantopithecus, largely because its [remains consist of only] three mandibles [jaw bones] and hundreds of teeth," he said.
Gigantopithecus fossils that are 7 or 8 million years old have been found in modern-day India and Pakistan. Remains less than 2 million years old, meanwhile, have turned up in China and Southeast Asia.
Given the limited fossil record, scientists debate how the ape evolved, when it died out, and precisely how big it was.
"There's this mythology that arose, largely because of the name, that it's got to be huge," Potts said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
so, the term "interacted" is just another way of saying they had sex, right?
Shaq the first?
Yuck!
FYI
Sounds sketchy to me. An ape occupying the planet for ~6M years would be amazingly impressive. Homo Sapiens are considered ~100K years old, and Homo in general only ~1M.
THis explains Ed Asner.
This image kills me. The white parts are conjectural; the dirty bit is what they actually found.
You're right. 90% of the skull is based on a really big Australopithicine.
Do it like they do on the Discovery Channel...........
Amazing, isn't it? I took a few anthropology courses in college, and the physical anthropologists DO use some very sophisticated analyses to draw out the "missing" parts (such as study the size and location of the points where tendon connects to bone to determine the size of the muscles), but yeah, I think a LOT goes to the imagination.
"Stalking through the forest, an early human hunter might have glimpsed an oversize ape through a thicket of bamboo."
Or maybe
Stalking through the forest, an early human hunter might have glimpsed an undersized human through a thicket of bamboo.
If I were them, I'd remind people of that fact by including at least one fanciful detail. For example, the skull above would look awesome with a nice pair of antlers...
I thought it meant "Instant Messaging".... but, I could be wrong.
;-)
Yes, I can't see how they get a whole race of giant apes out of just those teeth. Is there anything else they have except for the teeth? This puts a crimp in the whole big foot theory.
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