Did bigfoot really exist?

In a mode of speaking , yes , Bigfoot did subsist — although , perhaps not in the way many modern day cryptid partisan surmise . In a piece save for Smithsonian’sHominid Hunting , Erin Wayman service up the facts on Gigantopithecus — the car - sized quadruped that go extinct long before humans ever speculate about the existence of a vainglorious , hairy , valet - like ape .

Bigfoot . Sasquatch . Yeti . The Abominable Snowman . Whatever you want to call it , such a giant star , mythical ape is not real - at least , not anymore . But more than a million years ago , an emulator as bounteous as a polar bear lived in South Asia , until going extinct 300,000 days ago .

scientist first find out of Gigantopithecus in 1935 , when Ralph von Koenigswald , a German paleoanthropologist , walk into a pharmacy in Hong Kong and found an remarkably magnanimous primate grinder for sales agreement . Since then , research worker have collected hundreds of Gigantopithecus tooth and several jaw in China , Vietnam and India . Based on these fossils , it appears Gigantopithecus was intimately related to modern orangutans andSivapithecus , an anthropoid that lived in Asia about 12 to 8 million eld ago . With only dentition to go on , it ’s knockout to piece together what this animal was like . But based on comparing with gorilla and other modern imitator , researchers estimateGigantopithecus stand more than 10 feet magniloquent and weighed 1,200 pounds(at most , gorillas only press 400 pounds ) . dedicate their sizing , they probably lived on the background , walking on their clenched fist like modern orang .

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Fortunately , fogy tooth do have a peck to say about an animal ’s diet . And the tooth of Gigantopithecus also provide clue to why the ape vanish .

The features of the dentition - large , level molars , thick dental enamel , a recondite , monolithic jaw [ feature here]-indicate Gigantopithecus belike eat tough , sinewy plants ( similar to Paranthropus ) . More evidence came in 1990 , when Russell Ciochon , a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa , and colleague ( PDF ) placed samples of the ape ’s tooth under a read negatron microscope to look foropal phytoliths , microscopic silica structures that forge in plant mobile phone . Based on the type of phyoliths the research worker found stick to to the tooth , they concluded Gigantopithecus had a mixed dieting of fruits and seeded player from the fig familyMoraceaeand some sort of dope , probably bamboo . The combination of tough and sugary food helps excuse why so many of the elephantine ape ’s tooth were pervade with cavity . And numerous pits on Gigantopithecus‘s teeth — a sign of incomplete dental development due to malnuntrition or intellectual nourishment shortfall — corroborate the bamboo dieting . Ciochon ’s squad noted bamboo species today sporadically go through mass dice - offs , which affect the wellness of panda . The same matter could have happened to Gigantopithecus .

Further evidence of Gigantopithecus ‘ food preferences and habitat was published last November . Zhao LingXia of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues analyzed atomic number 6 isotopes in a sample of Gigantopithecus teeth . Plants have different forms of C based on their type of photosynthesis ; this carbon footprint is then recorded in the teeth of animal that eat plant . The squad determined Gigantopithecus - and the beast hold out alongside it , such as deer , horse and bears - ate only C3 plants , evidence the ape live in a forested environment . This oeuvre also affirm the aim bamboo diet , asbamboo is a C3 works .

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So what happened to this Pleistocene Yeti ? Zhang ’s team suggested the emanation of the Tibetan tableland 1.6 million to 800,000 years ago change the climate of South Asia , ushering in a colder , drier period when forests shrivel . Other factors could have exacerbated this crisis . Gigantopithecus‘s neighbour , Homo erectus , may have over - hunted and/or outcompeted their larger aper cousin-german . And at least one dental study indicates Gigantopithecus develop and matured very slowly - a preindication they probably had low procreative rate , which can get up a species’risk of going extinct .

Some Bigfoot hunter say Gigantopithecus is alive and well , hiding out in the forests of the Pacific Northwest . Other Sasquatch partizan , however , point out this is unlikely , as Bigfoot is reported to be a fleet , agile , just John Walker - not a log , 1,200 - pound quadruped .

Erin Waymanblogs over at Smithsonian magazine’sHominid Hunting .

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