can haul large bones into their underground dens and consume them entirely, except the hard, enamel-capped crowns of teeth. This may explain why teeth are typically found in great quantity, and why remains other than teeth are so rare. Classification G. blacki In 1935, von Koenigswald considered Gigantopithecus to be closely allied with the Late Miocene Sivapithecus from India. In 1939, South African palaeontologist Robert Broom hypothesised that it was closely allied with Australopithecus and the last common ancestor of humans and other apes. In 1946, Jewish German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich described Gigantopithecus as a human ancestor as "Gigantanthropus", believing that the human lineage went through a gigantic phase. He stated that the teeth are more similar to those of modern humans and Homo erectus (at the time "Pithecanthropus" for early Javan specimens), and envisioned a lineage from Gigantopithecus, to the Javan ape Meganthropus (then considered a human ancestor), to "Pithecanthropus", to "Javanthropus", and finally Aboriginal Australians. This was part of his multiregional hypothesis, that all modern races and ethnicities evolved independently from a local archaic human species, rather than sharing a more recent and fully modern common ancestor. In 1952, von Koenigswald agreed that Gigantopithecus was a hominin, but believed it was an offshoot rather than a human ancestor. Much debate followed whether Gigantopithecus was a hominin or not for the next three decades until the Out of Africa hypothesis overturned the Out of Asia and multiregional hypotheses, firmly placing humanity's origins in Africa. Gigantopithecus is now classified in the subfamily Ponginae, closely allied with Sivapithecus and Indopithecus. This would make its closest living relatives the orangutans. However, there are few similar traits (synapomorphies) linking Gigantopithecus and orangutans due to fragmentary remains, with the main morphological argument being its close affinities to Sivapithecus, which is better established as a pongine based on skull features. In 2017, Chinese palaeoanthropologist Yingqi Zhang and American anthropologist Terry Harrison suggested that Gigantopithecus is most closely allied to the Chinese Lufengpithecus, which went extinct 4 million years prior to Gigantopithecus. In 2019, peptide sequencing of dentine and enamel proteins of a Gigantopithecus molar from Chuifeng Cave indicates that Gigantopithecus was indeed closely allied with orangutans, and, assuming the current mutation rate in orangutans has remained constant, shared a common ancestor about 12–10 million years ago in the Middle to Late Miocene. Their last common ancestor would have been a part of the Miocene radiation