Re: GIGANTOPITHECUS

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buddhapkp@aol.com (BuddhaPKP) wrote:

>I am interested in hearing ideas on theories regarding Gigantopithecus.
>Was it a hominid ancestor? A true bipedal primate? Either way discoveries
>would lead me to believe that it lived along with Homo Erectus. I am very
>interested in finding new and recent sources of information regarding this
>big ass guy. And finally if it survived what and where would it be today?

>Mike Drake

Gigantopithecus belonged to the pongine clade of hominoid evolution,
together with orangutans and Sivapithecus etc. It had nothing
whatsoever to do with human evolution or hominids. Hominids evolved
5-8 Myrs ago when a chimpanzee suddenly rose up and decided to go
bipedal. 5-8 Myrs is called the "consensus" of divergence between
humans and african apes.

Forget Gigantopithecus. It was a dead end. Even though it's teeth show
similarity to hominid teeth, it cannot be closely related to us. It
has been well established, by molecular systematics that our
affinities lie with the chimpanzee. Did I say that molecular
systematics has priority over other methods in systematics? Well it
has. Why? Because it's very sophisticated technically. And above all
it uses computers a lot. Computers are very modern things. This
message was written on a computer. Need I say more?

Ludvig

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