A certain Chinese noblewoman — potentially Lady Xia, grandmother to the first emperor of China — had a menagerie buried with her in her tomb: a leopard, a crane, an asiatic black bear, a lynx, and, most notably, a gibbon. That gibbon was part of newly identified, now-extinct genus and species, researchers reported Thursday. The existence of a previously unknown gibbon that lived just 2,200 years ago suggests that throughout history, humans may have caused even more ape extinctions than we thought.
Chatterjee, Hansford, and their colleagues determined that the ape belonged to a different genus than today’s gibbons by studying its facial structures and the shapes and sizes of its teeth. Those features were significantly different enough to place it in a new category, as described in their study published today in Science. Hansford told Gizmodo that it was very lucky to find such a well-preserved gibbon skull.
Though a “natural” extinction not related to humans might have been the case for Junzi, Hansford and his co-authors argue that it’s extremely likely the species died out at the hands of people.
“It can’t be ruled out this is a natural, climate-driven extinction, but the Holocene has been the most stable period of climate the world has seen,” Hansford said. And at the rate ancient people in China expanded cities and agriculture, it’s very probable gibbon habitats were destroyed and even that the animals were hunted.
Gibbons today are threatened by human behaviour.
Today, gibbons occupy southwestern China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. They are apes, not monkeys, and share a common ancestor with the great apes (gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans) between 16 million and 20 million years ago. Like other apes, gibbons are highly threatened by humans.
“There are four species of gibbons in China today, and if you add up all four species, it comes to about 1,500 individuals,” said Paul Garber, a primatologist at the University of Illinois who wasn’t involved in the new study. Gibbons today are most often in danger from habitat loss from human farming and urban expansion, Garber told Gizmodo.
One gibbon species, the Hainan gibbon, occupies an island in southern China and has fewer than 30 individuals left. Another, the Skywalker hoolock gibbon, numbers fewer than 200. “If China can’t protect them, they’re gone,” said Garber.
That’s why understanding how humans have affected apes in the past is so important.