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Determining the diet of fossil apes is essential to understand primate evolution. The giant form from Southeast Asia, Gigantopithecus blacki, may have been up to 270 kg and survived until about 100,000 years ago. It is known only from isolated teeth and a few lower jaws with reduced front teeth and enlarged molars and premolars. A large spectrum of diets has been suggested for Gigantopithecus, ranging from carnivorous or grass-feeding in open savannah to a vegetarian diet dominated by fruits or bamboo. To determine its habitat and to understand why it became extinct, we tried to evaluate its dietary niche. The carbon stable isotopic composition of tooth enamel of this taxon compared to coeval and extant mammals from Southeastern Asia show that Gigantopithecus was a forest-dweller with a generalist vegetarian diet and was not specialized on bamboos. In southern China, Gigantopithecus lived in a forested …