Imperial gibbon

The imperial gibbon, Nomascus imperialis, is a gibbon that has gone extinct. It lived in central China during the late Holocene and disappeared at some point after 200 BC, possibly as late as the 18th century, which makes it the only known ape species to have died out in the Holocene. It became known to science from a partial skull found when the tomb of Lady Xia, grandmother of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, was opened in 2004 at Shaanxi. The animal is thought to have been a luxury pet in her menagerie, which also held cranes, leopards, lynxes and a black bear, and it was probably caught locally. Samuel Turvey and colleagues described it in 2018 as Junzi imperialis, the sole member of a new genus, on the strength of its distinctive molar teeth and skull. A 2025 study that recovered DNA from the type specimen and an older one placed it inside the genus Nomascus, as sister species to the Hainan gibbon, and the species was renamed accordingly. Subfossil remains about 4,000 years old from Yemao Cave in Chongqing mark the northernmost known gibbon record. The cause of extinction is uncertain but probably lies in the heavy deforestation of imperial-era central China.