There Are No Known Postcranial Remains of Gigantopithecus

12/6/2015

I've occasionally been accused by those on the "fringe" side of being too hard on them and too easy on mainstream scholars and skeptics. I don't really think that's true. I think I call BS when I see it. I attribute the perception of unfairness to a couple of different factors. First, I'm probably a little more careful about my choice of words when I'm discussing the work of those who are genuinely interested in answering a question or solving a problem (rather than just selling books). That's much more common among mainstream scholars. Second, I think "fringe" theorists tend to be more sensitive to criticism because they're not used to having their ideas openly challenged on the basis of evidence. Sometimes, unfortunately, scrutiny hurts their feelings. Third, some "fringe" theorists probably assume that I'm part of some wide-ranging conspiracy to suppress their ideas.

If I'm part of a conspiracy, I have yet to be told about it. Maybe someday "they" will let me in on the secret and I can start writing blog posts on a laptop with a fully functional keyboard and a working battery, maybe even while not at home watching kids on evenings and weekends. Just think how effective I could be if I could work without also being responsible for wiping noses, stopping couch wrestling, and pretending to eat imaginary pasta.

The fact is, professionals get things wrong also. Today's "whoops" comes from Paolo Viscardi, a natural history curator at the Grant Museum of Zoology in London. This "Ask a Biologist" page includes Viscardi's answer to the question "Were there ever giant humans?, which includes the following:

"Next I would say that there were Pleistocene apes called Gigantopithecus that stood about 10 feet tall. Their remains are very similar to those of humans, particularly when the skull is damaged. Mammoth and elephant skulls are also remarkably humanoid in appearance when they are damaged."

The appeal to the remains of Gigantopithecus is as unfortunate as it is wrong.

While there was a genus of ape (that we call Gigantopithecus) that existed in South and East Asia during the Pleistocene, we only know of these creatures through a few mandibles and teeth. No-one has ever found a Gigantipthecus skull or any other part of the skeleton. Just teeth and mandibles. So how could we say the remains of a Gigantopithecus look like those of a giant human? We can't, because we've never seen them.

The teeth and mandibles of Gigantopithecus are large. Those teeth and mandibles form the sole basis of our estimates of body size. Big teeth and jaws mean a big primate, right? Well, sort of. The problem is that there is a lot of variation among primates in the relationship between tooth size and body size (I touched on this subject in this post about why the original owner of the large Denisovan tooth wasn't necessarily a giant). Tooth size alone doesn't necessarily tell us much because tooth size is related to diet. Relatively small-bodied australopithecines had large grinding teeth because they had a diet that included a lot of tough, low quality foods that needed to be heavily masticated. The teeth and jaws of robust australopithecines (which were also small-bodied compared to modern humans) were even larger and were accompanied by a skull and chewing muscles that were clearly designed to produce and resist massive chewing forces.

Liuzhou, China: fossils of Gigantopithecus waiting to be discovered?

So how do we estimate the body size of Gigantopithecus? If you model the size relationship between teeth and body based on something like a gorilla (a primate with a relatively soft, fruit-based diet and small chewing teeth) you get a very large primate. If you use a model more like a robust australopithecine (a primate with a relatively tough diet and large chewing teeth), body size estimates are smaller. Gigantopithecus was large, but I don't think we'll know how large until someone finds some postcranial bones. I'm sure they're out there somewhere. When I have the opportunity to talk about Gigantopithecus in my classes, I show pretty pictures of Liuzhou in China (image source) hoping they will inspire someone to go out and look. Finding some Gigantopithecus bones other than teeth and jaws would be sweet.

Grover Krantz and his reconstruction of the skull of Gigantopithecus.

Anyway, the figure of a 10' tall ape is repeated often. Maybe Gigantopithecus was that large, and maybe it wasn't. Bigfoot enthusiasts love a big Gigantopithecus, as do some advocates of the idea that humans have "degenerated" in size over time. There is zero evidence that Gigantopithecus is a human ancestor, and, in fact, we don't even know that it was a biped. As with body size, ideas about whether Gigantopithecus walked upright on two legs are based on a few jaws and teeth. Anthropologist Grover Krantz's celebrated reconstruction of a Gigantopithecus skull, beloved by Bigfoot enthusiasts, was based on the same tooth and mandible fragments as all of our other interpretations. Krantz extrapolated a bipedal posture for Gigantopithecus based on the morphology of the mandible. Not a lot to go on there, but I guess that doesn't matter much if you already know the answer. (See this post for more discussion.)

The academic imagineering was further amplified recently when Jeff Meldrum and Idaho State University produced a "full-size" skeleton of Bigfoot to help the History Channel create more schlock programming for its already crowded schedule of crap.

"Meldrum borrowed from the physical looks of extinct animals such as the Gigantopithecus blacki — an ancient ape that was twice the size of apes today — and the Neanderthal — a species of human that is said to have became extinct 40,000 years ago."

So this "Bigfoot skeleton" is based partially on the "looks of extinct animals such as the Gigantopithethecus blacki"? Oh my. If you've read this far, you know that we really don't know much about what those extinct animals actually did look like. We've got some teeth and mandibles - that's it. From those meager remains, wishful thinkers (including academics) have built up several real-looking reconstructions that will probably be cited for years to come as actual evidence. That's why Viscardi's statement ("Their remains are very similar to those of humans, particularly when the skull is damaged") is so unfortunate: he's reinforcing the incorrect notion that all of this business about the giant, bipedal Gigantopithecus is fact, established based on the existence of skeletons and skulls.

That's just not true.

Maybe Gigantopithecus was a 10' tall biped. But maybe it wasn't. What we don't know about Gigantopithecus far outweighs what we do know. That vacuum of knowledge is what allows all kinds of notions (not all of which can be correct) to survive. Some of those notions will be killed off when actual postcranial remains are found. In the meantime, I hope that academics will take care to convey to the public what we actually do and do not know about this creature.

17 Comments

Brad Lepper

12/6/2015 08:16:05 am

Hi Andy,

I agree with your main points, but I don't think it's quite fair to state categorically that there is "zero evidence that Gigantopithecus is a human ancestor," i.e, a hominid. As recently as 1973 David Frayer presented evidence in support of such a claim in the pages of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330390310/abstract.
Especially in the light of four decades of further research (which unfortunately have not yielded up much in the way of new Gigatopithecus remains) I think it's fair to characterize Frayer's argument as unconvincing, but it's not "zero evidence."

Also, I think it's worth adding a link here to Donald Prothero's terrific skepticblog post on this subject for folks that want to read more about it: http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/12/28/gigantopithecus-and-crackpot-cryptozoologists/

Andy White

12/6/2015 10:58:21 am

Hi Brad.

Fair enough: "zero evidence" may be too strong. But I don't think I know any paleoanthropologist who thinks that Gigantopithecus was a hominid/hominin, let alone directly on the lineage that led to us. I could be wrong.

Thanks for the link - I've added it to the post.

Bob Jase

12/6/2015 08:28:01 am

Is it possible we do have post-cranial remains of Giganto but they just haven't been recognised as they are so unlike what is generally conceived?

Andy White

12/6/2015 11:07:26 am

I've often wondered that, but I'm not familiar enough with the general fossil record from that area to even be able to guess. Say it wasn't a biped and wasn't even truly "gigantic" . . . could some fragments of postcrania already be hiding in fossil collections in some museum somewhere?

Daniel

12/6/2015 10:52:23 am

Hi Andy

Daniel

12/6/2015 10:54:35 am

Sorry about that. Hi Andy, just thought i should warn you, that you probably will be getting some believer extremists coming over from bigfootevidence.com. They have descended upon you before. One in particular. He is a troll and its best to ignore him. You will know him when you see him.

Andy White

12/6/2015 11:09:25 am

Thanks for the warning. If they have something constructive to say that's fine. If not I'll just delete the comments.

Jeff Meldrum

12/7/2015 12:48:30 pm

To be more precise, we started with an existing neanderthal reconstruction as a representative robust bipedal hominid, which provide a means to readily scan and create a 3D model. The neanderthal was chosen over other bipedal hominids because it was most complete, and readily available from Bone Clones, making the job of generating a digital model a bit more straight forward. The model could be scaled and digitally modified to approximate the body proportions of a purported sasquatch -- the Patterson Gimlin film subject. Obviously, the neanderthal skull was less appropriate, but the skull of Paranthropus shows remarkable similarities in proportion to the head of the PGF subject, so we substituted it (not Gigantopithecus). I emphasized repeatedly that it was a hypothetical exercise, but one that provided a visual basis for rational discussions of the implications for an 8 ft 1000 lb primate (much like the inferential portrayal of G. blacki by anthropological artist Bill Munns). Unfortunately, much of that discussion was edited, leaving mostly the "oohh-aaaah" moments when considering the enormity of the completed model. I had no control over that.
You under value the correlation of body mass to dental proportions in primates, well established in the literature. Granted, G. blacki may exhibit some megadontia -- disproportionately enlarged moars and premolars, but that more likely effects the premolar dimensions. There's no dodging for whatever reason, its large size and the implications of that for diet and locomotion.
As large as it was, Gigantopithecus was almost certainly terrestrial. Once on the ground there are only two ways to walk -- quadrupedally, or bipedally. Given a hominoid history of arm-hanging, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of an ape don't handle quadrupedalism very well -- especially not in a 1000lb ape. So the odds are much better than than 50/50 that Giganto was bipedal to some degree.
Whatever the case may be, for the record we did NOT recreate a Gigantopithecus skeleton. It was a hypothecial inferential model of what a SASQUATCH skeleton might look like.

Bob Jase

12/7/2015 12:58:51 pm

"we started with an existing neanderthal reconstruction as a representative robust bipedal hominid"

Why? There is zero reason to consider Giganto to have been a hominid - clearly its a pongid, let alone bipedal.

"Given a hominoid history of arm-hanging, the shoulder, elbow and wrist of an ape don't handle quadrupedalism very well -- especially not in a 1000lb ape. So the odds are much better than than 50/50 that Giganto was bipedal to some degree."

Again, why assume G. was a hominid? And have you noticed that every ape other than humans is primarilly quadrupedal? That include two species of gorilla, at least one of chimp, bonobos, orangs, gibbons and siamangs - considerable more species than the one surviving human.

Jeff Meldrum

12/7/2015 01:27:59 pm

Please reread the final sentence --

"...we did NOT recreate a Gigantopithecus skeleton. It was a hypothecial inferential model of what a SASQUATCH skeleton might look like."

Wasn't that clear enough for you?

Please note the distinction between "hominid" and "hominoid"

I was clarifying some loose statements made by Andy about Gigantopithecus -- but the model building was about sasquatch. He equated it with Gigantopithecus, not me.

Andy White

12/7/2015 01:43:32 pm

Hi Jeff.

Thanks for the comment. I'll have more time to respond later, but for now I just want to point that I actually didn't say you had built a model of Gigantopithecus. Here is what I wrote (my paragraph followed by a quote from an article):

"

The academic imagineering was further amplified recently when Jeff Meldrum and Idaho State University produced a "full-size" skeleton of Bigfoot to help the History Channel create more schlock programming for its already crowded schedule of crap.

"Meldrum borrowed from the physical looks of extinct animals such as the Gigantopithecus blacki — an ancient ape that was twice the size of apes today — and the Neanderthal — a species of human that is said to have became extinct 40,000 years ago."

"
I said you made a model of Bigfoot. The article said you had "borrowed from the physical looks of extinct animals such as Gigantopithecus blacki." The overall point of the post is that we know very little about what Gigantopithecus actually looked like, but it seems like the notion that we DO is presented to the public over and over again. I understand that you have no control over what a reporter eventually decides to write, but the end result is the same: the public is told that we know what Gigantopithecus looked like.

Jeff Meldrum

12/7/2015 02:09:29 pm

Point taken. But the reaction by Bob Jase suggests that some of your readers conflated the two matters. I also wanted to provide a little background rationale to process, which I feel was more that mere "imagineering." At least I took your usage as a bit derogatory. Maybe I am taking your intend wrongly. After all, much hypothesis generation in science is a form of "imagineering."

Andy White

12/8/2015 08:09:14 am

Thanks again for the comment, Jeff.

I see four points that I'd like to follow up on.

(1) I'm a fan of the use of models. I think they're absolutely integral to the process of doing science (especially about things we can't directly observe, like the past). So I understand that there could be many things to be learned by creating a model: explicit models force you to think about how parts go together and are related to one another.

My question, though (and it's an honest one), is what have you learned or are you going to be able to learn from your model? I can see real usefulness from trying to understand what the skeleton of an 8-10' tall primate would have to be like in order to be an obligate biped. But it seems like you would need some kind of way to ask mechanical questions to do that (e.g., could femora and joint surfaces of this size really handle the body weight we're estimating? how big would the abductors and adductors have to be to swing these enormous legs in and out?).

There are some unfortunate examples of purely "visual" models of things that don't exist that have taken on a life of their own on the internet. Images of the "giant skeleton" that Von Daniken created for his museum pop up as evidence for giants on fringe and Creationist websites, as does Joe Taylor's sculpture of a 47" femur. I've also seen images of at least one alleged Bigfoot skulls that is also a sculpture.

(2) Relationships between body size and tooth size. I'm not saying Gigantopithecus wasn't large, I'm just saying I think there's too much noise in the body size/tooth size relationships of primates to bandy about a figure like 10' with a whole lot of confidence. I may be behind in the literature on this. If you know of a recent paper that lays out the available data in a nice graph, I'd love to see it (body mass or height estimate vs. 1st molar area?).

(3) Diet. If the large grinding teeth are telling us about a rough, low quality, difficult to process vegetable diet (do you agree that they are?), wouldn't that mean that Gigantopithecus would have to have a large gut to process all that food? Primate physiology isn't specially adapted like that of other large herbivores (e.g., cows) to process all that plant matter, so it's hard for me to imagine how much rough plant matter a 1000 lb primate would have to consume to stay alive and how big it's guts would have to be to process it all. If body size is smaller and the teeth are extra large (for processing the plant matter as it goes into the body), I think it becomes easier to imagine. Am I missing something?

(4) Locomotion. Why not a knuckle walker? Other large terrestrial primates (chimps and gorillas) use knuckle walking effectively. In fact, if you think that there's a good chance that the chimp-human LCA was not a knuckle walker (which I do), you can argue that knuckle walking evolved at least twice, probably as an adaptation related to increased body size. So why not also in the lineage leading to Gigantopithecus? Say the original Late Miocene stock from which Gigantopithecus evolved was some relatively small-bodied arboreal biped . . . could not the upper limbs have become adapted for knuckle walking as body size increased?

Chris

12/10/2016 05:51:19 am

I came upon this post after watching the live action "Jungle Book." I am not a scientist. It disappointed me that all we have of this species of ape that has been meticulously reconstructed from top to bottom are jaw and molar bones. I don't quite understand (and forgive my ignorance) how it's really possible to determine that this is a new species based on a few teeth and a jaw, much less to reconstruct it. How often are ancient species of mammals (that we see depicted in museums or on TV as though it is a settled matter) based on just a few fragments? Don't get me wrong, speculation is great and necessary and everything--but these speculations end up getting presented as settled fact based on a few teeth. It all seems rather dishonest. Would love to know more about the justification for all this. I imagine I'm overlooking something.

Andy White

12/11/2016 06:51:17 am

Hi Chris,

The size of the teeth alone make it pretty clear that Gigantopithecus is unlike other creatures (i.e., we know it's not just a fossil orangutan or gorilla or something like that). The teeth also make it clear we're dealing with an ape. You are correct, however, that reconstructing the remainder of the size/morphology/physiology from the teeth and mandible includes a lot of speculation. That was one of the points of the post. Elsewhere I've discussed the problem that tooth size and body size are not as highly correlated as many non-professionals suppose:

http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/tooth-size-bodysize-and-giants-an-analytical-issue-that-has-persisted-for-eight-decades

Cameron McCormick

1/4/2018 07:26:11 am

Since you posted this Zhang & Harrison (2017) had an indispensable review of _Gigantopithecus_. Using molar area, they estimated a mass of 204–280 kg; that's really not much heavier than the average male gorilla (169 kg) and barely outside their range of variation (266 kg max). They don't discuss height (as post-cranial remains are still lacking) but it would certainly seem that 6–7 feet is a far more sane estimate than 9–12 feet.

Interestingly, _Gigantopithecus_ has dental anatomy that is so derived that its relationships to other hominids is obscured. The relationship to Orangutans is surprisingly tenuous, based largely on location. So it certainly could be possible that Gigantopithecus is the member of some other ape lineage... but there's no good reason for thinking it's a hominin!

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23150/full

David Hicks

4/10/2018 11:54:45 pm

I have sometimes wondered if Gigantopithecus could be a descendant of Proconsul or Ramapithecus. The latter I've heard may have been ancestral to Orangs. I also have been really skeptical of the common conclusion of Giganto as being 9' to 10' and very likely bipedal. I have a feeling it may have had an outsize head with outsize jaws and maybe adapted like giant pandas to eating bamboo. As such I envision a quadrupedal, knuckle-walking or fist-walking portly ape with a huge round head and massing 200 to 300 kg but standing only 5.5' to 7' tall when standing bipedally (which, like gorillas, it did not do often). And almost certainly it could not walk bipedally more than a few steps. I'm not a scientist, just an avid fan of science. Wish I could visit Liuzhou and go Giganto fossil hunting.

There Are No Known Postcranial Remains of Gigantopithecus

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