Gigantopithecus blacki von Koenigswald, a giant fossil hominoid from the Pleistocene of southern China. Anthropological papers of the AMNH ; v. 43, pt. 4
Supplemental Materials
Date
1952
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Publisher
New York : [Published by order of the Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History]
DOI
DOI
Abstract
"Gigantopithecus blacki von Koenigswald is known from four molars bought in Chinese drugstores in Hong Kong and Canton. These represent four individuals from at least two different localities. In addition four other teeth (two last lower premolars, one upper median incisor, and one upper canine) can tentatively be referred to the same species. The molars are the largest known of any higher primate. In pattern they come close to man, but in the degree of hypsodontism they bypass even modern man. Gigantopithecus might be regarded, with reservation, as a gigantic member of the human group (the tendency towards hypsodonty has not been observed in anthropoids), but as a certain degree of overspecialization is already observable in the molars, he cannot be regarded as ancestral to man. The same conclusion is reached on the basis of geological observations. The Ailuropoda-orang fauna of southern China, of which Gigantopithecus is a member, belongs to the (early) Middle Pleistocene. Within this fauna there already existed a hominid of ordinary size, Sinanthropus officinalis von Koenigswald, a form contemporary with Sinanthropus pekinensis Black of North China"--P. 323.
Description
p. 295-325 : ill. ; 27 cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-325).
Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-325).
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