In 1935, German paleontologist Gustav von Königswald, who visited a Chinese traditional medicine store in Hong Kong, bought several giant ape teeth that were more than twice the size of a gorilla's teeth.
The find has long been considered controversial and almost a fake, until in 1956 the entire jaw of such a hominid was found in the Chuifan Cave in China:
Subsequently, several more similar finds were made, and on their basis, paleoanthropologists postulated the existence of two species of these huge animals: Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis, which lived 5-10 million years ago in China, and Gigantopithecus blacki, which lived in northern India for at least 1 million years. ago. Sometimes a third species is distinguished, Gigantopithecus giganteus. Previously it was believed that the last representatives of the species died out about 100 thousand years ago.
Biologists do not have a consensus on how this creature looked, since having only fragments of the cranial skeleton on hand cannot say much. It was usually assumed that the hominid was a relative of modern orangutans, but only its weight reached 600 kilograms at least:
Whether gigantopithecus was just a large orangutan or walked on two legs is difficult to say.
Usually, when reconstructing gigantopithecus, they made it look like a gorilla, since biologists do not know other great primates. However, anthropologist Grover Krantz once proposed a theory according to which gigantopithecus walked on two legs.
Promotional video:
In particular, Krantz drew attention to the fact that the found jaws of the gigantopithecus expand towards the back, like in humans. This suggests the presence of the same type of trachea, since in animals moving on two limbs, the trachea (more precisely, the muscular apparatus supporting it, which is attached to the expansion on the jaw) has a completely different structure.
In general, there was a lot of controversy until scientists from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and the Faculty of Human Health Sciences at Copenhagen University were able to extract some characteristic proteins from the enamel of the preserved teeth. This has already painted a slightly different historical picture, the report of which was published in the journal Nature on November 13, 2019.
The magazine, as you can see from the link, is paid, but its free version is kindly retelled by mysteriousuniverse.org.
Judging by the conclusions of the authors of the study, gigantopithecus is indeed closest of all genetically to the orangutans, from which it was separated by evolution about 12-10 million years ago. But, according to the authors of the study, the hypothesis of the extinction of gigantopithecus 100,000 years ago, as well as the hypothesis of its life exclusively in Southeast Asia, are erroneous.
Most likely, gigantopithecus lived throughout Eurasia, where its bones have yet to be found. It also became extinct most likely relatively recently and somehow overlapped with Homo erectus. Although, of course, for the final conclusions, the researchers require the finding of the surviving DNA fragments.
It would be naive to expect some more radical explanations from the officials, however, what do we know today without their help?
First, we know that all the so-called “dating” with an orientation to some geological strata is absolutely far-fetched, since objects made by people are found in strata that are tens of millions of years old.
Sometimes these "layers" reach the point of absurdity when people find fossilized car tracks in the desert, which are tens of millions of years old.
Spain, Castellar de Meca area:
Turkey, Phrygian Valley region:
Secondly, we know that the reference to the existence of extinct species in the depths of millions of years is also baseless. So, when found, all these fossils, which are "millions of years old", stink of rotten meat, and even cells of rotting tissues are often found there in one way or another. That is, we are not talking about millions of years, but about thousands, perhaps even just centuries.
Thirdly, many primitive peoples have legends that somewhere in the neighboring forests live either gigantic monkeys, or huge people covered with wool. Out of the blue, such myths do not arise.
In addition, the myth, in order for it to live, needs to be supported from time to time by incidents. If, for example, tomorrow UFOs disappear in the sky, in 100 years people will forget the term itself. Who doubts - we read Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary of the 1860 model. We assure you that you will find many new words for yourself.
Thus, this whole theory of "dating" does not cost anything and, as mysteriousuniverse.org correctly concludes, these huge hominids did not die out how many years ago, but most likely they exist somewhere to this day, and sometimes we do not see them then we hear.