In the 1950s, paleontologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with Fifern as the core, began to excavate and study great apes. They also started by investigating the Chinese medicine shop, and in 1956 alone, they collected 47 giant ape teeth, the origin of which was indeed consistent with Connihua's speculation, in the Pearl River Basin. Since then, in the 1950s and 1960s, continuous survey work was carried out in the central and western parts of Guangxi Province, mainly in Liucheng County and Daxin County, and everywhere they went were tower-shaped limestone tectonic terrains, and the total area of the survey was about three times that of the Japanese island of Honshu. In 1956, three fossils of giant ape teeth were first excavated in a limestone cave in Daxin County, Guangxi. In the same year, three giant ape mandibles were first excavated in the Carboniferous Cave in Liucheng County. In 1956, two more giant ape jaws were discovered, accumulating nearly a thousand teeth. Incredibly, no other body bones and femur fossils of the great apes have been found. In 1968, in Piraspu, in the foothills of the Himalayas, in northern New Delhi, India, a fossil jaw of a great ape was found, which was earlier than china', and was 6.3 million years old in the late Miocene. After the 1970s, several giant ape fossil sites emerged in southern China, and in 1970, giant ape fossils were found in Jianshi County, hubei near the south of the Yangtze River; In 1973, giant ape fossils were also found in Bama County, Guangxi; In particular, giant ape fossils have also been found in the Three Gorges area along the Yangtze River, further confirming that the distribution range of giant apes is larger than that of the Pearl River Basin and can be extended to the Yangtze River Basin.
Wei Guorui, an American scholar known for his study of Chinese apes, initially thought that the teeth of a giant ape represented a burly orangutan. In 1945 he delved into the teeth of the great ape, believing that it resembled the teeth of humans, renaming it "Giant" and believing that it was the direct ancestor of the Javan ape man and the Chinese ape man. He went on to compare the fossils of "giants" with the teeth of the Quebec and Javan apes found in Java. It was found that the teeth of the great ape were larger than those of the Kui people who originally thought that the teeth were very thick, and the era was also earlier than that of the Kui people; The teeth of the Quetzalcoatl are larger than those of the Javan apes, and the era is also earlier than the Javanese apes. So he concluded that the law of the evolution of human teeth is from large to small: the process of human evolution began with giant apes, passed through Quetzalcoatl, Javan apes, and until Homo sapiens, including modern humans, which is the so-called "giant theory" of human evolutionary theory.
From 1952 onwards, Connihua accepted Wei Guorui's view that the giant ape was indeed a "giant", a kind of primitive human living in Southern China in the Quaternary Period, but it was a specialized side branch, not a direct descendant of humans. "Giant Say" was popular for a short time and was quickly rejected. Based on fossils of the associated mammals of the great apes, Connie Hua concluded that the great apes lived in the early to middle Pleistocene from 2 million to 500,000 years ago.
Analyzing the jaws and teeth of a great ape can help to understand its diet, lifestyle, and body size.
The tooth pattern of the great ape is the same as that of the higher primates, including humans, and the total number of teeth is 32. Judging from the morphology and wear of teeth, it is very similar to humans. Its anterior teeth (incisors and canine teeth) and buccal teeth (premolars and molars) are both chewed in a grinding fashion, especially the enamel of the buccal teeth is thick and wear-resistant, suitable for chewing the leaves of ory plants.
The mandibular branch (the part of the segment associated with the upper jaw) of the great ape is very tall, wide, stout, and perpendicular to the lower jaw, indicating that it has strong chewy muscles attached to it. It is an animal that eats grass and eats plant foods. Its weight is estimated by the size of its jaw to be 270 kg and its height to be 2.7 m. Such a behemoth must have the ability to eat efficiently, and for it, strong chewing power is crucial.
Interestingly, some people have compared giant apes with the chewing apparatus of the giant pandas that accompany them, in an attempt to find the reason for their "extinction" and "existence". Giant pandas evolved from a carnivorous bear and are now vegetarians. Due to the great change in eating habits, its chewing apparatus and even the shape of its head have also changed greatly, becoming very close to that of the giant ape. Its teeth are crowded, without gaps, and the buccal teeth have become wider, losing the characteristics of the carnivorous tooth system, and the lower jaw is also higher and wider. It is inferred that the diet of giant pandas may be more similar to those of giant apes, living in the same environment, eating similar foods, and they are competitors to each other. Beginning in the middle of the Pleistocene, the climate in southern China gradually dried out, and giant pandas may slowly change to the main eater of plant leaves, migrating to slightly moist bamboo-covered areas, and until today, barely surviving. The great ape's poor adaptability to the new environment still requires a large amount of herbaceous food, and as the climate drier intensifies, the plants available for it to eat are becoming less and less sufficient, which eventually leads to its extinction and becomes a loser in the competition for survival.
There are two opinions on the systematic location of the great ape. One opinion is that the teeth of the great ape are very similar to those of humans, and that it is in the same system as humans; Another view is that the similarity between the great ape and the human is similar in appearance, and the essence is still very far apart, so it is a kind of ape. For the great ape, there is no evidence of bipedal walking uprights, the most important feature of humans, so the basis for including it in the human category is insufficient. Where is it classified? And why the sudden extinction?...... These mysteries have not yet been solved, and they need to be continuously explored and discovered by scientists.