The Largest Ape Ever Was Discovered in Hong Kong

Between approximately 2,000,000 and 250,000 years ago, during the early to middle Pleistocene, a giant orangutan-like ape roamed the forests of central and southern China. Aptly named Gigantopithecus—which literally means "giant ape"—this largest representative of the primate family stood 3 meters (10 feet) tall and weighed between 200 and 300 kilograms (440–660 lbs).

Nearly 300,000 years after our largest distant cousin vanished from the surface of the Earth, anthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald was searching through a jar full of so-called “dragon teeth” destined for traditional Chinese medicine. While browsing a drugstore near the Western Market on Hong Kong Island, he discovered abnormally large third upper molars measuring 20 mm by 22 mm (3⁄4 by 7⁄8 inch).

In 1935, he named the newly discovered species Gigantopithecus blacki after Canadian paleoanthropologist Davidson Black, who had died one year earlier. By 1939, after purchasing additional fossilized teeth, he correctly determined that Gigantopithecus originated from the Chinese provinces of Guangdong or Guangxi.

Although no remains of Gigantopithecus have ever been discovered in the soil of Hong Kong, due to its geographic and ecological continuity with prehistoric Guangdong, it remains highly possible that this ancient cousin once roamed the territory's forests.