Taller ape existed alongside humans 100,000 years ago

[emad]

WASHINGTON: A taller ape who died out 100,000 years ago lived along side early humans, a researcher found.

The largest primate roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years in the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years, found Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences in McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontari.

The ape was about 10 feet (3 meters) tall and weighed as much as 1,200 pounds (544 kg), says the report, which appeared in science portal world-science.net.

A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pinpointing when the ape named as Gigantopithecus blackii existed.

http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=9660

[Fridays Child]

1. Herbivores or otherwise, I wouldn't have wanted to get in their way.

[ret5hd]

3. just kick 'im in the nads! (nt)

[xchrom]

2. so perhaps the folklore re: yetis is based in fact.

perhaps genetic memory?

that's a bit far fetched -- but fun to contemplate.

[Lerkfish]

4. you beat me to it: yetis was my first thought.

[htuttle]

12. I wouldn't suspect 'genetic' memory, necessarily...

But I'd say that 'long term cultural' memory would be a real possibility. That seems like a very long time for ANY information to be passed down via word of mouth, but consider how long we transmitted the essentials like making fire, stone tools, etc...long before writing was devised.

I think that a lot of the weird myths that you find all around the world have a similar type of origin. Not 'genetic' memory (in some automatic, pseudo-Lamarckian sense), but bits and pieces that have been transmitted through language and culture for a long, long time.

[GreenArrow]

5. aka Sasquatch

?

[Dogmudgeon]

6. It's an old puzzle

Gigantopithecines are known to have existed millions of years ago -- but their survival to 100 kYA is controversial.

At that size, they would make "cryptosimians" like Yeti and Sasquatch look small. I'm not too optimistic that Yeti and Sasquatch exist, but after all, gorillas were thought to be mythical beasts until the 1890s. (I think it was the 1890s.) We've been looking for the others for decades, and have come up empty-handed.

Maybe we'll find some "hobbits" -- H. floresiensis -- surviving in australasia, too. But we probably won't.

Unfortunately, the article doesn't give much information on the new development. Keep an eye on the science news websites -- they may have the entire story.

--p!

[applegrove]

7. Herbivores never hurt anything.

[MercutioATC]

8. Tell that to a plant.

:evilgrin:

[frogmarch]

9. 5 most dangerous

Some professional big-game hunters say the five most dangerous killers on the African continent are the lion, leopard, elephant, Cape buffalo and rhinoceros. Three of those are herbivores.

[applegrove]

10. And Hippos. Yes - their size means they can kill you by running you

over. For sure. But it ain't like they hunt you. You just have to invade their territory and then they'll attack.

Apparently that didn't work for these particular apes. I wonder if we destroyed their habitat and killed them off - you know... like we always do!

[frogmarch]

11. Either that, or

slaughtered them outright.

Speaking of hippos, after reading your post, I remembered reading something about what you said about hippos being dangerous too, so I googled it. Here's what I found:

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - An adult male hippopotamus attacked and killed a security guard at a smart South African resort on Monday, police and wildlife officials said on Tuesday.

"The guard saw the hippo early on Monday morning eating grass on the resort's golf course and his boss told him to observe its movements. It then charged him and killed him," police spokesman Harry Shabangu told Reuters.

A spokesman for the local provincial parks board told Reuters the hippo was later tracked down and darted. It died after the darting because it "was very stressed."

"The hippo was a big adult bull and it had injuries which may have been sustained in fights with other hippos. This may have made it aggressive and may have contributed to its stress levels," the parks board spokesman said.

The incident occurred at the upmarket Sabi River Sun resort near the renowned Kruger National Park.

Hippos are territorial and aggressive and kill more people in Africa than any other wild mammal.

~~

Yikes.

[applegrove]

13. I think Hippos kill more people than any other African Animal. Elephants

weill try and get along - hippos have absolutely no use for humans. They are not stupid.

[emad]

14. 'King Kong' with inch-wide teeth who walked alongside early Man

'King Kong' with inch-wide teeth who walked alongside early Man
By Sam Lister
TIMES


THE largest ape to walk the Earth — a prehistoric primate that weighed up to 85 stone (540kg) and had inch-wide teeth — may have lived alongside early humans, according to scientists.
Fossils from the 10ft tall ape Gigantopithecus blackii, which were found in southern China, have been dated to the same era when humans are thought to have inhabited the area.



Jack Rink, a Canadian paleontologist, said that samples of the primate’s lower jaw suggested that it was alive as recently as 100,000 years ago.

Professor Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster University in Ontario, discovered that teeth from the giant ape — one of only a handful of Gigantopithecus artefacts known to science — came from a relatively recent and pivotal era for Homo erectus, a human ancestor.

“A missing piece of the puzzle has always focused on pinpointing when Gigantopithecus existed,” he said. “This is a primate that co-existed with humans at a time when humans were undergoing a major evolutionary change.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1872177,00.html