Evolutionary anthropology textbooks claimed this, and creationists followed suit. However, this actually misunderstood Dubois, as Stephen Jay Gould has shown. It’s true that Dubois claimed that Java man (which he called Pithecanthropus erectus) had the proportions of a gibbon. But Dubois had an eccentric view of evolution (universally discounted today) that demanded a precise correlation between brain size and body weight. Dubois’ claim about Java man actually contradicted the reconstructed evidence of its likely body mass. But it was necessary for Dubois’ idiosyncratic proposal that the alleged transitional sequence leading to man fit into a mathematical series. So Dubois’ gibbon claim was designed to reinforce its “missing link” status.