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News Anthropology

A 2,200-year-old Chinese tomb held a new gibbon species, now extinct

Researchers suspect that humans drove this previously unknown lineage to extinction

gibbon

EXTINCTIONS PAST  People may have caused a distinctive line of gibbons to go extinct sometime within the last 2,000 years, a discovery from an ancient Chinese tomb suggests. All gibbon species living today (Hoolock hoolock, shown) are imperiled.

RealityImages/Shutterstock

By Bruce Bower

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