Gigantopithecus, one of the largest apes to roam the earth over 100,000 years ago, refused to adapt to a new diet after the last ice age and became instinct. It refused to eat its greens laid out in the new Savannah grasslands and remained partial to its preferred diet of fresh and fermented fruits of the remaining forested sanctuaries. Scientists are puzzled at the choice, that eventually condemned the mega ape to extinction. The Guardian reports: Gigantopithecus – the closest nature ever came to producing a real King Kong – weighed five times as much as an adult man and probably stood 3m (9ft) tall, according to rough estimates. In its heyday a million years ago, it inhabited semi-tropical forests in southernChina and mainland south-east Asia. Until now, though, almost nothing was known about the giant’s anatomical shape or habits. The only fossil records are four partial lower jaws, and perhaps a thousand teeth – the first of which turned up in the 1930s in Hong Kong apothecaries, where they were sold as “dragon’s teeth”. These meagre remains “are clearly insufficient to say if the animal was bipedal or quadrupedal, and what would be its body proportions”, Herve Bocherens, a [...]