"The largest ape to roam Earth died out 100,000 years ago because it failed to tuck into savannah grass after climate change hit its preferred diet of forest fruit, scientists suggest.

Gigantopithecus -- the closest Nature ever came to producing a real King Kong -- weighed five times as much as an adult man and probably stood three metres (nine feet) tall, according to sketchy estimates.

In its heyday a million years ago, it inhabited semi-tropical forests in southern China and mainland Southeast Asia."

Marlowe Hood reports for AFP January 4, 2016. [2]