Flexibility of diet and habitat in Pleistocene South Asian mammals: Implications for the fate of the giant fossil ape Gigantopithecus

Determining the diet of fossil apes is essential to understand primate evolution. The giant form from Southeast Asia, Gigantopithecus blacki, may have been up to 270 kg and survived until about 100,000 years ago. It is known only from isolated teeth and a few lower jaws with reduced front teeth and enlarged molars and premolars. A large spectrum of diets has been suggested for Gigantopithecus, ranging from carnivorous or grass-feeding in open savannah to a vegetarian diet dominated by fruits or bamboo. To determine its habitat and to understand why it became extinct, we tried to evaluate its dietary niche. The carbon stable isotopic composition of tooth enamel of this taxon compared to coeval and extant mammals from Southeastern Asia show that Gigantopithecus was a forest-dweller with a generalist vegetarian diet and was not specialized on bamboos. In southern China, Gigantopithecus lived in a forested environment, as did the coeval fauna, while in Thailand, it occupied only the forested part of a mosaic landscape including significant parts of open savannah. The carbon isotopic compositions of Gigantopithecus were different from those of omnivorous and carnivorous taxa, but very similar to those of orang-utans and unlike those of the bamboo-specialist giant panda. Therefore, even when open savannah environments were present in the landscape, Gigantopithecus foraging was limited to forested habitats. The very large size of Gigantopithecus, combined with a relatively restricted dietary niche, may explain its demise during the drastic forest reduction that characterized the glacial periods in South East Asia. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.