Everything Science Forum

Tooth for Sale as a 'Dragon Bone' Led to Discovery

Nov. 23, 2005 — The world's largest primate, a 10-foot-tall giant with inch-wide teeth, lived in southeast Asia for many centuries alongside human beings, according to a leading researcher.

Exploring remote caves isolated in a densely forested region of southern China, Jack Rink, a professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster University in Ontario, found fossilized remains of the huge ape.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1334307&page=1

Using sophisticated fossil dating techniques, Rink determined that the primate, known to scientists as Gigantopithecus blackii, lived between 300,000 and a million years ago. Humans also existed in the area at that time.

"A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pinpointing when Gigantopithecus existed," said Rink. "This is a primate that co-existed with humans at a time when humans were undergoing a major evolutionary change."

Interest in the primate was initially sparked in 1935 when a paleontologist named G. H. von Koenigswald found an old, yellow molar in a Hong Kong apothecary shop. Sold as "dragon bones," the fossil bones are traditionally believed to possess curative powers.

Few other fossil remains had been found in the years since, until Rink's bushwacking adventures led him to the caves in southern China. Rink used an advanced dating method called electron spin resonance, pioneered at McMaster University, to precisely determine the fossils' age.

The giant ape, who weighed as much as 1,200 pounds, was a plant eater, subsisting mainly on bamboo. This limited diet may have led to the ultimate extinction of Gigantopithecus, who had to compete for forest resources with humans and other animals.

Most paleo-anthropologists, I think, have long espoused the view that there were several hominid species living at the same time during periods of pre-history. Evolutionary trees are typically bushy, with a good amount of speciation and dead ends. There is no simple ladder of evolutionary ascent. We may be all that's left of the hominid tree, but who knows how complex the branching process was over the past several millions of years.