Indopithecus giganteus

Indopithecus giganteus is an extinct species of large great ape that lived in the late Miocene of the Siwalik Hills in northern India. It is known only from teeth and jawbones. Guy Pilgrim named it Dryopithecus giganteus in 1915 from a large lower third molar, and Gustav von Koenigswald created the genus Indopithecus for it in 1950. Szalay and Delson treated it as Gigantopithecus giganteus in 1979, but recent authors consider Indopithecus a distinct genus. Gigantopithecus bilaspurensis, named by Simons and Chopra in 1969 from lower jaws dated to about 6 to 9 million years ago, is regarded as a junior synonym. From the slim finds it was a large, ground dwelling herbivore that ate mainly bamboo and foliage, and it was about half the length of its Chinese relative Gigantopithecus blacki.