Gigantopithcus blacki probably lived in “a mosaic of forests and grasses” Garcia/Joannes-Boyau (Southern Cross University) The largest known primate went extinct between 295,000 and 215,000 years ago, probably driven by its inability to adapt its food preferences amid a changing climate. A relative of today’s orangutans, Gigantopithecus blacki, known as “Giganto”, was 3 metres tall and weighed up to 300 kilograms. Despite surviving for more than 2 million years, the species has been a bit of an enigma since its fossilised tooth was found in a traditional medicine shop in Hong Kong in 1935. The enormous tooth was initially purported to belong to a dragon, but palaeontologists quickly recognised it was, in fact, from a primate. “When you think about them, you think about giants,” says Kira Westaway from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “Normally when you think about a giant, you think about a dinosaur, but this was a giant in the primate family.” To establish a timeline for when the ape went extinct, Westaway and her colleagues studied hundreds of its teeth and …