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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."

12 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Re:huh..? by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 2, Insightful
    It's not much to go on, but...

    "Since then 3 jaw bones and over a thousand teeth have been recovered, not only in apothecary shops but in situ as well" ... "Gigantopithecus blacki was 10 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds. ... The way they arrived at this picture was first to estimate the size of the head from the jaw, and then to use a head/body ratio of 1:6.5 in order to determine the body size."

    Interestingly, "Females may have been half the size of the males, since the teeth fall markedly into two distinct size groupings".

    Curiously, clues from the surfaces of two teeth have them living on something akin to figs as well as grasses (probably bamboo).

  2. Oh geez! by thej1nx · · Score: 2, Insightful
    First any remains of a dwarf are automatically dubbed "hobbit" by the media and now a giant ape remains are dubbed "King Kong"

    What is the fetish of present-day media with dubbing scientific discoveries and news with hollywood inspired names ????

    What is up next ?
    "antique car found in a warehouse!" - "WE FOUND HERBIE!!!! "
    "Giant crocodile remains found"- "GODZILLA LIVES! IT IS TRUE!!! REMAINS BEING SENT TO TOKYO!!!"
    "150 years old skeleton of a cowboy discovered" - "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAN WITH NO NAME!!!"
    "broken phone instrument found lying around the crime area" - "E.T. FINALLY PHONED HOME!!!"

    Sheesh!!!

  3. Re:Birth of a Legend by afaik_ianal · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A specimen, live or dead, will do nicely to silence the skeptics.

    I'm sure it would - It's amazing what evidence will do to an objective person's views. If only the lack of any evidence would manage people's overactive imaginations a little.

  4. Re:huh..? by meringuoid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    So it could just as easily have been a species of normal sized apes with abnormally sized heads, rather than abnormally sized apes with normal sized heads.

    Not so easily. First off, large heads will require proportionately broad hips at least, else the species will run into severe difficulties reproducing itself. Second, the proportion of head (or more accurately brain) size to body size is roughly correlated to intelligence - for instance an elephant has a bigger brain than I do, but also a much bigger body. A head as disproportionately large as you suggest would suggest that these apes were very bright - so why do we rule the world?

    --
    Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
  5. Re:Oh, the irony... by tod_miller · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Research into Gigantopithecus blackii began in 1935, when the Dutch paleontologist G.H. von Koenigswald discovered a yellowish molar among the "dragon bones" for sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy.

    In any complex enough system you can prove almost any relationship if you are willing to ignore various holes in your own logic. Lets welcome the next speaker, a guy who ones watched a low budget documentary on evolution and darwin, here to convince us all that he is right.

    Oh sorry, did I disturb you sense of well being. My bad.

    --
    #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
  6. Big Ape by Edman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The "gigantopithecus blackii" is a long known species, and scientist already proposed the fact pre-sapiens humanoid species did often have contact. I don't know why this old "news" is dug out again. some kind of "getting-people-to-the-cinema"-publicity for the new King Kong movie by Peter Jackson? by the way, the old one (from the seventies)was great...

  7. Re:Why the incesant need to convert english to met by cbv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe, just maybe, because the majority of people in the world do use metric?

  8. Re:100,000 years humans did not walk in asia by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 3, Insightful

    wikipedia pegs the start of H.Sapiens at 200,000 years ago

    "Wikipedia pegs?!?!?" Wikipedia could be a kid in his pajamas sugared up on Fruit Loops and jujubes watching a Mummies Alive! marathon and logged on from his Mom's computer.

    Wikipedia! You cite it like it means something. C'mon...

  9. Re:Birth of a Legend by saforrest · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Almost every religion on this earth speaks of a flooding so big almost nothing survived - which should collide with the time a giant astroid hit the ocean somewhere around Cuba...

    Um, you seem to be referring to the K-T extinction, which rendered approximately 50% of all genera extinct and is currently believed to have been caused by a meteorite impact in the Gulf of Mexico near what is now the Yucatan Peninsula.

    The thing is, that was 65 million years ago, at which time we -- and almost all other mammals -- were tiny furry insect-eaters trying our best not to get stepped on. So I hardly think we're going to find long-buried echoes of this event in our oral histories.

  10. Re:Theories? by celticchrys · · Score: 3, Insightful


              See, even the Bible admits that species can go extinct or change. (which some evolution opponents deny) God must get a good chuckle whenever someone starts howling about how evolution didn't happen, acting like they know just what process their god used to start life. Either that, or he is continually disappointed because so many of us refuse to see the clues left lying around for us to learn from, wasting these brains we were given.
              I mean, come on, a day isn't the same length on Mars as here on Earth, and yet some morons still think it must have been literally 7 Earth days in which the universe was made!

  11. Re:100,000 years humans did not walk in asia by saforrest · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Wikipedia pegs?!?!?" Wikipedia could be a kid in his pajamas sugared up on Fruit Loops and jujubes watching a Mummies Alive! marathon and logged on from his Mom's computer.

    I don't understand how people, on Slashdot of all places, can't get past the anyone-can-edit-so-it's-all-crap argument about Wikipedia.

    It's true that at any given time the content of any given Wikipedia page could be "omigod justin timberlake RULEZ", but you will notice that such changes last, usually, about 3-4 minutes. Discerning when this has and has not happened is what the "revision history" and "talk" pages are for.

    Yes, there's nothing to stop stupid crap from being added, but I have yet to find a case where said crap does not reveal itself with a bit of effort. If I'm looking up information about human evolution, and find an article written by a kid in his pajamas, well, that will quickly become obvious to me from the writing. Similarly, if the article was not written by said kid, but said kid comes along and randomly changes "1,000,000 years ago" to "100,000 years ago" with no convincing argument in the edit summary, it will generally be noticed and reverted.

    No, you can't make unequivocal statements about the content, and information of a highly technical nature is hit and miss. But the degree of coverage more than makes up for this. And in most cases, by combining the article content with judicious use of edit history, talk page discussions, and general critical judgment, I've found Wikipedia to be good enough as an information resource that it's usually the first place I look on the Internet.

  12. Re:Theories? by LnxAddct · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You read the bible based on assumptions. You can not prove those assumptions. I am the second coming of god, disprove it... thats right, you can't. And just like Jesus did in the bible, if you test me I'll tell you not to test the lord. So I can make all the claims I want and tell you that you aren't allowed to test them... your only choice is to hope that what your parents have told you your whole life is right. If someone gave me a bible and changed around a few names, I'd think it was another epic poem by Homer. I made no claims about my intellignece, I simply implied that those who believe simply because they are told to believe don't deserve their brain. You cannot read the bible and come to a conclusion about its legitimacy. In order to prove something, it has to be proven using something else, disconnected. I can say all humans are 6 ft. tall, then look at myself and consider that a proof... but I'd be dead wrong. The way religion is set up, you can never prove or disprove its basis. It is like Santa or the Easter Bunny... you can never prove they don't exist, you just assume that based on popular oppinion they don't. Anything that you could say to try and prove that Santa doesn't exist can be refuted, maybe he's tired and taking a break, maybe he delivers presents to everyone except to you while the rest of the world is in on a giant conspiracy to lie to you about it... it could go on forever. People want more to life than there is, they want to be special, they want a purpose. People have the balls to claim that they are designed in the form of God, what kind of self-serving bullshit is that? That claim requires alot of balls. Anyway... considering how often the bible has been translated and edited and modified by various authorities who felt it necessary to make it fit their views, not to mention a few of the languages originally written in no longer exist, I'd read that book with a grain of salt. One example of horrific editorializing by the church is with the book of St. Thomas. It is one of the few books that depicts Jesus in his teens, it would of helped fill in the gap between his childhood and manhood. The church disallowed it because it showed Jesus abusing his powers, which considering Jesus is part human and a teen seems completely natural to me, but the church thought people would use it to justify doing misdeeds because even Jesus got away with at some parts in his life. The bible was put together with the intention of control in mind. The church wants people to fear, because then the church can control. Context is everything, and the bible lacks it. You only see what the church wants you to see.
    Regards,
    Steve