Gigantopithicus blacki is a
prehistoric ape in the
orangutan family that, if size
projections taken from
teeth and
jawbones bear out, is the largest ape ever to have lived, standing about ten feet tall and weighing in at 1,200 pounds. Because of its proportions it has been pointed to as a possible origin of the
bigfoot and
yeti mythos -- and indeed the
Asiatic creature having lived about a hundred thousand
years ago could indeed have coexisted with
humans. Whether it made its way across the
ice age era
arctic bridge to live in seclusion in the
Pacific Northwest is a much more
speculative point (but perhaps not an utter impossibility -- perhaps just a mite greater than the
possibility that these apes were
intelligent enough to realize the direction that man was going, and to withdraw to an
underground kingdom where they now remain hidden through a super-advanced
cloaking device).
But contrary to some tall tales it was not the inspiration for
King Kong, the earliest
evidence of the ape having been recognized as such in 1935, two years after the film broke giant-ape ground (though
Peter Jackson's 2005
remake did give the historical
beast a nod in the
production notes). Naturally, the real deal, though towering over humans, was nowhere near the size of Kong, nor even of the title beast of
Mighty Joe Young.