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King Kong Lived?
Agent Provocateur writes "McMaster University recently announced the discovery of the remains of a gigantic ape, measuring over 3 meters tall and weighing up to 600kg, that supposedly co-existed alongside humans." From the article: "Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster, has determined that Gigantopithecus blackii, the largest primate that ever lived, roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago. This was known as the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years."
With a BMI of 600/(3^2) = 66.6 he was one big fat ape (the healthy limit for a human is 25). I guess these creatures were intelligent enough to invent fast food and maple syrup pancakes.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
In fact, TFA says "Research into Gigantopithecus blackii began in 1935". (70 years ago, recent on the geological scale, perhaps.) The article is about a new dating method that determined that the ape "roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago", the same period humans were developing, and thus the possibility of interaction, or that we wiped them out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Heinrich_Ralph _von_Koenigswald
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'There were giants in the earth in those days' - Genesis 6:4
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Easy, during the periods after the demise of the dinosaurs there was an explosion of mamallian life on Earth. Animals just got bigger and bigger.
There was a species of sloth that lived while humans roamed the Earth that was bigger than an elephant from today. Mamoths, big hairy elephant ancestors, roamed the land and they were twice the size of today elephants. A lot of animals were really huge during these periods. They are called Megafauna. Only two Megafauna from this time exists today; the Blue Whale and the Giant Squid.
I'm not really all that surprised by the existance of a giant ape. A lot of animals that are small today were really huge 100,000 years ago and earlier.
This of course leads to the possibility that other Megafauna might have survived like the Blue Whale and Giant Squid did. What is Nessie is a Megafauna, a species of some sort of giant fish or cold-blooded reptile (not a Dinosaur, but there were giant cold-blood reptiles after the Dinosaurs died out also) might be the answer.
Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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That was talking about humans =p Also to do with TFA, does anyone ever believe the accuracy of carbon dating? o_0
which is totally what she said
Actually the teeth were found some time ago. What's new is the dating information. Dogma claimed that they died out 500,000+ years ago. The new evidence brings the date up to 100,000 years ago. This will now become current dogma given this is not likely to be the date they actually died out. So few teeth and bones have been found it's impossible to even guess at an extinction date but until more bones are found it's the new hard ceiling and any more recent teeth found will be held to a high standard of evidence inorder to break through the entrenched dogma. It's amazing to me that an animals entire history is assumed based on a few bones. We know for a fact that T-Rexs died out 65,000,000 years ago. No in fact we don't know that it's simply that the most recent fossils found are 65 mill old. Very few T-Rex skeletons have been found so any dates given are wild guesses. The KT boundry exists based on a large number of fossils but few of them were Rex fossils. They probably did died out during that period there simply are no hard facts to support that and some dinosaurs are bound to have survived the KT barrier for a few million years we simply haven't found the fossils. Given the sparce nature of the record it's possible none of the fossils exist so true dates may never be known. The same situation exists with the ape fossils. The actual extinct probably occured more recently there simply aren't fossils to back it up yet. It's even possible a small number survived until historic times but that's unlikely. If they died out recently it's probable that bones would have been found unless they existed in very remote areas in small numbers. The irony is that if they were isolated the giant ape might have even lost much of it's size. The pygmy effect that happens to island bound animals can happen in isolated pockets in non island areas. There's obviously talk that they still survive and are the source of the Bigfoot legends. Highly unlikely given if they lived until modern times and actually managed to spread their range to North America there would have been bones to find. There hasn't been a single primate bone or fossil found in either Canada or the US. It sounds likely that like Pandas they were locked into a diet of Bamboo so it's probable that a bamboo die off ultimately killed them and probably not man. With a calorie intact like they had major die offs like we have today would have been devastating and probably kept their numbers low. I'm praying on a complete fossil to settle the upright or knuckle walk issue. The skull points to upright but most resist that idea so most recontructions still show knuckle walking. Dogma always supercedes evidence until it's impossible to ignore. Pterosaurs are still considered flying reptiles because of a dispute over leg orientation. Their skeletons were identical to small theropod dinosaurs but dogma still states that they somehow walked splay legged. People are slow to change. Remember that most still think of Europe as a continient inspite of having water on only three sides. The source of that was Victorian arrogance not scientific fact.
Resently, i heard a talk of Russell Ciochon about the Giganto. He was also addressing the possibility that humans and Giganto might have co-occoured in the area. He said that he now thinks that the teeth subjected to early humans might actually belong to some other, smaller ape.
It may not have lived alongside H. sapiens, but it definitely would have encountered H. erectus, which certainly constitutes 'early human', don't you think?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
What is/are "midgits"
"An invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe, starting with a mountain, trees and a "midgit" (sic). All evidence pointing towards evolution was intentionally planted by this being." - from wikipedia's Flying_Spaghetti_Monsterism article.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
That is debatable (but a silly debate). If you consider Neanderthals as early humans too (they decended from H erectus just like H. sapiens) then yes H.erectus is a early human too. It's all depending on where you draw the line. If you stretch it really far, you could even argue that the first proto-mammals were early humans too. Personally(as a laymen) I draw the line at H. Sapiens. Before that is humanoid, but not human.
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This is really more on the Mighty Joe Young size scale.
It wasn't withheld though. Everyone's known about Giganticus Blackii for quite some time now.
Nope, carbon dating has nothing to do with this. The timescale here is from 100,000 - 1,000,000 years ago. Carbon dating is only good on a timescale of thousands of years; that's great for mysterious Assyrian artefacts, frozen icemen, Egyptian mummies and so forth, and it's not bad for mammoths and sabretooths and things, but not for this. Once something's been dead for a very long time, nearly all the radioactive carbon has decayed and it's no longer a useful clock.
What's being used here is apparently electron spin resonance dating, of which more here. Not sure what the uranium measurement is, though; AFAIK, the uranium-lead clock is used on a timescale of billions of years, to date the most ancient rocks, though I'm no geologist and there may well be other decay products that give a shorter-term measure.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
>> 80% Funny
:)
>> 20% Informative
>
> What have 20% of the moderators been smoking?
The moderators have a sense of humor. I often read the moderation status after I read the post, and seeing a joke get modded as Informative or Insightful is enough to make me crack up again. Now if only I could metamod as Funny.
Oh yeah, and also some people say this is a way to give karma to the comedians, since Funny apparently doesn't give you any karma credit.
Actually, no. It's kg, with a small k. Also, ks (kilo-second, 1/86.4'th of a day), km (kilometer, 1/1.609344 of a US mile), kHz etc.
Gigantopithecus has been (as the article states) studied since the 30's. Reading the summary, I thought somebody had found some new fossils. Seems to me they did not even "find a tooth", the article is actually about estimating the age of an existing fossil.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This guy is big, but hardly gigantic. He appears to be about twice as big as a modern lowland gorilla. For comparison, an average grizzly bear can weigh up to 1500 pounds and top 10 feet tall. The worlds record Kodiak bear was 2500 pounds and 13 feet tall. The worlds record black bear was over 900 pounds.
Yep, I did my anthropology degree years ago, and they had taught us about the dude back then.