Radio Interview - Deutschlandfunk Nova

Petra Gutenbrunner gave a radio interview about the Gigantopithecus publication on Deutschlandfunk Nova

Petra contributed to the study “Enamel proteome shows that Gigantopithecus was an early diverging pongine” by Welker et al. published in Nature 2019. Gigantopithecus is an extinct ape species from the Early to Middle Pleistocene of southern China and the species is estimated to be about 3 meters tall.

With this study Frido Welker and his colleagues showed for the first time, that it was possible to retrieve genetic material from a 1.9 million year old tooth in a subtropical area by applying palaeoproteomics. Based on the identified and reconstructed protein sequences it was possible to retrieve single amino acid polymorphisms (SAPs) which enabled the phylogenetic placement of Gigantopithecus revealing it as a sister clade to orangutans with a common ancestor about 12-10 million years ago. To retrieve genetic material this old and in a warm and humid environment shows the possibility to extend the genetic reconstruction of the evolutionary relationships between our species and extinct ones further back in time.

As co-author, Petra was interviewed about the study by Deutschlandfunk Nova and you can listen to the interview here (the interview is in German).