Homo erectus lived in Java with two other ape species: Meganthropus and the ancestors of orangutans

An articl Published: 08 April 2019 in Nature Ecology & Evolution,(Evidence for increased hominid diversity in the Early to Middle Pleistocene of Indonesia by Clément Zanolli et al., reports that at least two species of great apes coexisted with Homo erectus in Indonesia over 1 M years ago.

We already knew that Homo erectus lived with the ancestors of modern orangutans, but now a third ape has been reported, and all three species lived together on the island of Java.

The scientists analyzed teeth discovered in 1941 by Gustav von Koenigswald (which he assigned to a new species, the Meganthropus) and found that they didn't belong to either Homo erectus or the ancestral orangutans.

They apparently belong to another ape, the Meganthropus. The thickness of the teeths' enamel and the positioning of the cusps set them apart from the other two species. Furthermore their wear pattern is similar to that of modern and ancient organgutans, meaning that they ate a similar diet of fruits.

The article is behind a paywall, but the abstract is accessible:

Since the first discovery of Pithecanthropus (Homo) erectus by E. Dubois at Trinil in 1891, over 200 hominid dentognathic remains have been collected from the Early to Middle Pleistocene deposits of Java, Indonesia, forming the largest palaeoanthropological collection in South East Asia. Most of these fossils are currently attributed to H. erectus.
However, because of the substantial morphological and metric variation in the Indonesian assemblage, some robust specimens, such as the partial mandibles Sangiran 5 and Sangiran 6a, were formerly variably allocated to other taxa (Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Pithecanthropus dubius, Pongo sp.).
To resolve the taxonomic uncertainty surrounding these and other contentious Indonesian hominid specimens, we used occlusal fingerprint analysis (OFA) to reconstruct their chewing kinematics; we also used various morphometric approaches based on microtomography to examine the internal dental structures.
Our results confirm the presence of Meganthropus as a Pleistocene Indonesian hominid distinct from Pongo, Gigantopithecus and Homo, and further reveal that Dubois’s H. erectus paratype molars from 1891 are not hominin (human lineage), but instead are more likely to belong to Meganthropus.

Meganthropus

The hominin which Gustav von Koenigswald discovered and named Meganthropus was big. He estimated its size as being two-thirds of that of the Chinese Gigantopithecus, which in turn was twice the size of modern gorillas.

Meganthropus would therefore weigh around 500 lbs (250 kg) and measure 8 feet tall (2.44 m).

He unearthed a jaw fragment, lost to the Japanese during Word War II, but a cast sent to Germany survived the war.

The lack of other physical evidence led most scientists to group it with Homo erectus, as a variant within that group.

This new paper however puts it in a separate species, distinct from H. erectus and the orangutans.

Could the Meganthropus have evolved into sentient beings? Could the small hominins (i.e. those found in Flores Island or the Philippines) be descendants of this ape?

Or are they related to Denisovans?

Now we know that they differ from Pongo (orangutans), Homo (us) and the Gigantopithecus.

Comparison: the jaw fragment of Meganthropus, an Orangutan jaw (right) and a reconstructed Homo erectus jaw (left) Credit: Senckenberg.

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