Real King Kong was killed off by climate change, shows study

KING KONG may be able to fight off Godzilla, climb the Empire State building and swat helicopters out of the sky, but his real-life counterpart had more trouble with climate change, a study has found.

The largest primate ever, Gigantopithecus blacki, was 10ft tall, weighed more than half a ton and lived in what is now southern China. But an unpredictable climate wiped out the species about 215,000 years ago.

While the fictional Kong is based on an enormous gorilla, the G. blacki were cave-dwelling and looked similar to large orang-utans. The animals were known to have existed but exactly when and how remained a mystery until now.

During a study of 22 Chinese caves, scientists analysed soil, teeth and dirt to estimate that the species lived from around two million years ago.

Evidence from ancient pollen trapped in the cave dirt shows the main issue the giant apes faced was that the seasons were becoming more extreme and varied. Dating techniques narrowed the era for when the mammal was last alive, and this was key to then working out what caused it to die out.

“It’s a major feat to present a defined cause for the extinction of a species, but establishing the exact time when a species disappears from the fossil record gives us a target timeframe for a behaviour assessment,” said Kira Westaway, co-lead author and associate professor geochronologist at Macquarie University, Sydney.

The birth of wet and dry seasons, and the stark contrast between the two, 700,000 years ago made it harder for the species to find food, the team believe. Their teeth changed in an attempt to eat a wider variety of food, but the animals were not mobile and ended up in isolated sections of woodland.

“G. blacki was the ultimate specialist, compared to the more agile adapters like orang-utans, and this ultimately led to its demise,” said Prof Yingqi Zhang, co-lead author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.