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Description
Prompted by a message on the Wikipaleo Project discord I went on a journey to create a plausible upper size estimate for Gigantopithecus blacki, the supposed gigachad of Hominidae. The starting point was this horribly dated image , which I sought to update to the best of my abilities. (It actually got quickly replaced by a completely different graphic, but whatever, I hate myself so I kept working on this regardless.)

With the original showing Gigantopithecus in a bipedal pose and with humans as bipeds naturally being curious about such comparisons, I kept that aspect of the old graphic and concentrated on building a plausible bodyplan for the big ape. I started with pongine proportions and modified them somewhat to better suit terrestriality and probable quadrupedality. Since we don't have any postcranial remains, and G. seems not to have been particularly closely related to Pongo, the exact look of the animal is bound to be highly speculative. This includes the extent of hair, which adds illusion of bulk to the already big and wide frame. I don't think that a fairly long and thick coat of hair is unreasonable for Gigantopithecus, however.

The scaling is based almost entirely on photos of the largest preserved mandible (fragment) with the assumption that the jaw isn't extremely hypertrophied in Gigantopithecus. This may not be correct! The current thinking seems to be that the lower jaw was likely extremely robust and massive in comparison to the rest of the skull, similar to some other hominids (e.g. Paranthropus robustus) with very strong jaws. Unfortunately I don't know of rigorous skull/skeletal reconstructions that would reflect that thinking, so I settled for establishing an upper size allowed by assuming a more Pongo-like skull instead.

Oversized or not, the silhouette I ended up with is a far cry from the old estimates of a 3 meter tall monster ape. The only way I can make sense of those estimates is if they assumed Gigantopithecus to have the unaltered anatomy of a gorilla. Even then, this is an absolutely terrifying size for a pongid, considering the tremendous strength of a regular orangutan. Don't be surprised if a considerably smaller version of this graphic appears in the future.

Description
Prompted by a message on the Wikipaleo Project discord I went on a journey to create a plausible upper size estimate for Gigantopithecus blacki, the supposed gigachad of Hominidae. The starting point was this horribly dated image , which I sought to update to the best of my abilities. (It actually got quickly replaced by a completely different graphic, but whatever, I hate myself so I kept working on this regardless.)

With the original showing Gigantopithecus in a bipedal pose and with humans as bipeds naturally being curious about such comparisons, I kept that aspect of the old graphic and concentrated on building a plausible bodyplan for the big ape. I started with pongine proportions and modified them somewhat to better suit terrestriality and probable quadrupedality. Since we don't have any postcranial remains, and G. seems not to have been particularly closely related to Pongo, the exact look of the animal is bound to be highly speculative. This includes the extent of hair, which adds illusion of bulk to the already big and wide frame. I don't think that a fairly long and thick coat of hair is unreasonable for Gigantopithecus, however.

The scaling is based almost entirely on photos of the largest preserved mandible (fragment) with the assumption that the jaw isn't extremely hypertrophied in Gigantopithecus. This may not be correct! The current thinking seems to be that the lower jaw was likely extremely robust and massive in comparison to the rest of the skull, similar to some other hominids (e.g. Paranthropus robustus) with very strong jaws. Unfortunately I don't know of rigorous skull/skeletal reconstructions that would reflect that thinking, so I settled for establishing an upper size allowed by assuming a more Pongo-like skull instead.

Oversized or not, the silhouette I ended up with is a far cry from the old estimates of a 3 meter tall monster ape. The only way I can make sense of those estimates is if they assumed Gigantopithecus to have the unaltered anatomy of a gorilla. Even then, this is an absolutely terrifying size for a pongid, considering the tremendous strength of a regular orangutan. Don't be surprised if a considerably smaller version of this graphic appears in the future.