Before modern humans developed civilization, a giant ape once dominated the dense forests of Asia. Standing up to 3 meters tall and weighing between 200 and 540 kilograms, it was the largest primate ever known to have lived on Earth.
Its name was Gigantopithecus blacki, and its extinction around 300,000 years ago remained a mystery that was only solved nearly a century later. All that remains of this creature are teeth and jawbones, yet from those fragments scientists have managed to reconstruct its life story in remarkably rich detail.
First Discovered in a Traditional Medicine Shop
The story of G. blacki did not begin with a field excavation, but in a pharmacy in Hong Kong. In 1935, Dutch paleontologist Ralph von Koenigswald discovered unusually large teeth being sold as “dragon teeth” for use in traditional medicine. The teeth were five times larger than those of modern humans.
He traced the origin of the teeth to caves in southern China by using records from local supply and marketing cooperatives. Subsequent excavations by Chinese paleontologists uncovered thousands of additional fossils in areas near the Vietnamese border.
To this day, the fossil record of G. blacki consists of only around 2,000 teeth and four lower jawbones. Other bones were likely chewed away by porcupines that dragged the remains of G. blacki into caves, with bite marks still visible on several fossils.
From those teeth, scientists estimated that the ape stood between 3 and 4 meters tall and weighed around 200 to 500 kilograms. Residue found on the teeth revealed that it was primarily herbivorous, though it occasionally consumed insects.
Due to its enormous size, G. blacki is believed to have been unable to climb trees. Instead, it likely used its height and strength to break tree branches in order to reach food.
A True Specialist That Failed to Adapt
For 1.7 million years, G. blacki thrived in the rich and diverse tropical forests of Asia. Its population was large and stable, with its range spanning four provinces in south-central China.
However, between 700,000 and 600,000 years ago, the climate changed dramatically. Seasons became more extreme, dense forests gradually gave way to shrublands and grasslands, the fruits that formed its primary diet became increasingly scarce, and water availability also declined. Bamboo and sage plants, which were important parts of its diet, disappeared as well.
Pollen analysis from ancient cave sediments revealed major shifts in the region’s vegetation composition, while charcoal analysis showed changes in fire patterns that reflected increasingly pronounced seasonal differences.
As fruit became harder to find, G. blacki turned to consuming bark and twigs, a far less nutritious diet that triggered chronic stress and drastically reduced its roaming territory from four provinces to only a small part of Guangxi.
Its contemporary relative, the orangutan species Pongo weidenreichi, managed to survive by broadening its diet to include leaf shoots, insects, and small animals. G. blacki, however, was unable to do the same. Its massive body made it less agile and incapable of climbing trees.
Researchers in a study published in Nature concluded that the species went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, based on six independent dating techniques applied to samples from 22 caves that produced 157 radiometric age estimates.
Two Million Years of Secrets Preserved in Teeth
The teeth of G. blacki not only preserved clues about its extinction, but also about its evolutionary origins. A proteomic study published in Nature in 2019 successfully extracted protein fragments from fossilized teeth more than 2 million years old found in Chuifeng Cave in southern China.
The results revealed that G. blacki was most closely related to orangutans of the genus Pongo, rather than gorillas as previously assumed. The proteins recovered were around five times older than any mammalian proteome ever published before.
This achievement was especially remarkable because the fossils came from a humid tropical environment, where biological material usually deteriorates rapidly. The extremely dense tooth enamel proved capable of protecting proteins from degradation for millions of years, opening the possibility of using similar methods to trace the origins of other species much further back than previously imagined.
