Climate Change and Extinction: What Happened to Gigantopithecus blacki.

An ancient great ape called Gigantopithecus blacki lived in southern China and was the biggest of its kind, possibly going extinct because the climate change made its favorite fruits harder to get. This giant ape was really big, ten feet tall and weighed as much as 650 pounds, which made it difficult for them to find food when it became scarce.

Gigantopithecus blacki survived for around 2 million years, eating fruits and flowers, until the climate and environment started changing, reducing the amount of food available. Scientists used ancient pollen and sediments, along with fossil teeth, to figure out how these changes affected the giant apes' food supply.

The giant apes likely died out between 215,000 and 295,000 years ago because they couldn’t adapt to eating less nutritious food like tree bark and reeds when their preferred food sources became less available. Their extinction shows how changes in the environment and food availability can have a big impact on large species.

Scientists have mostly learned about Gigantopithecus blacki through fossil teeth and jawbones found in China, with no complete skeletons ever discovered. Fossil records indicate that many great ape species lived between 2 million and 22 million years ago across Africa, Europe, and Asia, but now only a few species remain.

There is uncertainty about where the great ape family originally came from, with ongoing research trying to uncover more about these ancient relatives of ours. The research into Gigantopithecus blacki is part of a broader effort to understand how climate change and environmental shifts have historically affected different species, including our own.