What happen to the real King Kong?

[DrmDoc]

The extinction of Gigantopithecus probably isn't news but new evidence on the probable cause of that extinction was recently published. They stood about 9 feet and are cousin to the Asian orangutan. A group researching the remains of teeth found that during an Ice Age, about 100,000 years ago, they likely could not adapt to the diminishing supply of the vegetation that serve their huge dietary needs. The link above will take you to the article. I welcome your thoughts.

[dimreepr]

Your link suggests it wasn't vegetation that diminished but their favourite fruit.

 

 

They stood about 9 feet and are cousin to the Asian orangutan.

 

 

 

You seem to have answered your own question.

[DrmDoc]

Your link suggests it wasn't vegetation that diminished but their favourite fruit.

 

From the article: Examining slight variations in carbon isotopes found in tooth enamel, Bocherens and an international team of scientists showed that the primordial King Kong lived only in the forest, was a strict vegetarian, and probably wasn't crazy about bamboo.

 

I reviewed the article and could find no specific reference to fruit. Although I titled this topic as a question, I was merely paraphrasing the title of the article to which I provided the above link. I found the article interesting and thought I might share it here.

Edited January 5, 2016 by DrmDoc

[dimreepr]

This is the first sentence.

 

The largest ape to roam Earth died out 100,000 years ago because it failed to tuck into savannah grass after climate change hit its preferred diet of forest fruit, scientists suggest.

 

[DrmDoc]

Your right; however, the article goes on to say that they where strict vegetarians suggesting that their diet subsisted of other vegetation that became scarce during the Ice Age. The author further states that these large apes were likely not adapted for climbing trees and swinging from tree limb which, in my opinion, made fruit harvesting difficult regardless of abundance. The author also suggest that small apes were better adapted for the increasing savannah by subsisting on grasses and roots, which should have been easy for a strict vegetarian but likely not sufficient, in my opinion, for an animal of its size.

Edited January 5, 2016 by DrmDoc

[dimreepr]

Fruit contains a lot of calories, grass does not, and a large body needs calories or a large enough biomass.

 

There are four ways to gather fruit:

 

1/ Climb the fruit bearing tree.

 

2/ Gather the fallen fruit.

 

3/ If you’re big enough, bend the fruit bearing branches to your level.

 

4/ shake the fruit off the tree.

[DrmDoc]

Ok, let see if we can come to some resolution. Here is a link to an abstract of the paper published in the Quaternary International upon which the first article (Gigantopithecus) is based. In that abstract, the paper's authors state that "A large spectrum of diets has been suggested for Gigantopithecus, ranging from carnivorous or grass-feeding in open savannah to a vegetarian diet dominated by fruits or bamboo." By this, the authors' operant appears to be a suggestion of a fruit or bamboo dominated diet rather than a conclusion. The authors go on to say that "The carbon stable isotopic composition of tooth enamel of this taxon compared to coeval and extant mammals from Southeastern Asia show that Gigantopithecus was a forest-dweller with a generalist vegetarian diet and was not specialized on bamboos." Clearly, the author of the first article inferred that the researchers exclusion of a bamboo eating taxa meant a dominance of fruit in Giganto's diet. This paper's authors clearly did not make that distinction in their abstract. In fact, grass-feeding was also a suggested operant that remain an excluded distinction.

Edited January 5, 2016 by DrmDoc