The remains of an extinct gibbon have been found in an ancient tomb in China, and its existence was unknown to the scientific community until now. Known as the Junzi Empire, the primate was found in the 2,300-year-old tomb of The 2,300-year-old Lady Xia, the grandmother of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.
According to a new study published last week in the journal Science, the remains of the now-extinct gibbons could actually serve as evidence that human actions led to the first extinction of primates. Lead researcher of the project, Dr Samuel Turvey, a gibbon expert at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), shed light on the importance of these findings, saying:
All of the world's apes — chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons — are threatened with extinction today as a result of human activity, but no ape species are thought to have gone extinct as a result of hunting or habitat loss. However, the discovery of the recent extinct gentleman changed this, highlighting in particular the fragility of gibbons.
Despite multiple extinction events in the animal kingdom, no concrete evidence of the extinction of human-driven primates has been found since the end of the Ice Age, which coincides with when humans began to influence other species. James Hansford, one of the paper's authors, explains:
What stands out about this study is that it represents a unique genus that is truly new to science. But it also represents the extinction of the first known human-driven primates we know of. We think they've historically been much more resistant to human influence, but in reality, they actually suffered much longer than we think. This is expected to highlight the plight of gibbons and other primates.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > zoo inside the tomb</h1>
Located in shaanxi province in north-central China, the 2,300-year-old Tomb of Lady Xia is essentially an ancient zoo. In addition to part of the skull and jaw of the now-extinct gibbon, the tomb contains the skeletal remains of creatures such as cranes, lynx, leopards and Asian black bears.
Historically, unlike monkeys, gibbons were considered aristocratic members of the primate family and were often kept as luxury pets by the Chinese royal family. In fact, "junzi" means erudite junzi, which in turn indicates that gibbons have a higher status among Chinese primates.
The fossils were first discovered in 2004 and preserved in a museum in China, where Tevi found the ape skull five years later. Because it looked somewhat different from the skulls of extant gibbon species, Twee and Helen Chateji, an evolutionary biologist at University College London, decided to investigate further.
The two created an extensive database of skull and tooth sizes from all four species of the genus Gibbon. To do this, they studied and measured 477 skulls and up to 789 teeth. In comparing the skull fossils to the database, the team found that the now-extinct Chinese gibbons had larger brains and narrower cheekbones than existing species. In addition, it was found that the grinding surface of its teeth was greater than the average.
This, in turn, led researchers to believe that the ancient gibbon might have been a completely different species. However, apart from the above features, scientists have not been able to discover much about apes. Others in the scientific community have questioned whether it is right to call it a new species.
For example, according to Terry Harrison, a bioanthropologist at New York University, the anomalies in the gibbon's skull and jaw may also be due to the fact that it is a captive animal. While DNA analysis may help dispel confusion, museum officials have decided to object given the fragile state of the fossils.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="13" > the earliest evidence that humans drove the extinction of the great apes</h1>
High-tech digital modeling of the remains shows that the gentleman gibbon survived only a few hundred years ago. According to Helen Chatterjee of University College London, the disappearance of the animal was largely due to excessive human stress on the environment. She added —
Our historical data suggest that these factors contributed to the southward migration of gibbons, which are currently limited to the southernmost tip of China – in the case of junzi, it eventually became extinct.
Historical records suggest that gibbons may have lived in and around central China more than 2,000 years ago. However, about 300 years ago, when forests were cut down to make way for farmland, they disappeared from the area. Researchers believe that this, combined with the pet trade, is the cause of their deaths.
Gibbons are the smallest of the apes and are found mainly in the tropical and subtropical rainforests of Asia, including eastern Bangladesh, northeastern India, southern China, and Indonesia. Although historically containing only one genus, the family Gibbonidae currently divides into four genera. The four genera contain 18 species in turn, such as siamang, white-handed gibbons or lar gibbons, and white-browed gibbons.
Currently, most gibbon species are endangered due to forest habitat destruction, hunting and illegal trade. In fact, all Chinese gibbon species are currently classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. According to Hansford, there are only about 26 Hainan black-crowned gibbons in the world today, a species endemic to China's Hainan island.
Susan Cheyne, director of the Borneo Nature Foundation, stressed the importance of the latest findings, concluding:
If we don't deal with the double whammy of habitat destruction and hunting, we now know it almost entirely. Eliminating one without the other is not enough. I hope we can also highlight the plight of living gibbons. We use the past to help understand the modern and look to the future so that we can begin to protect what we have and regenerate what we have lost.