I was under the impression that the "animal" type was supposed to be used for real-world animals, both extant and extinct.
As far as I know, the gorthek is completely fictional. Why is it an animal and not magical beast? Other combination animals like griffons are magical beasts.
Can anybody explain the reasoning for making it an animal?
Something does not have to be a real world animal to have the animal type. Griffons and other magical beast normally have greater than animal intelligence or some magical features such a breathing fire.
The Gorthek has an int of 2 and has nothing special that qualifies it as a magical beast as there is nothing magical about it.
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Animal creature type entry in the Bestiary:
"An animal is a living, nonhuman creature, usually a vertebrate with no magical abilities and no innate capacity for language or culture."
It's not restricted to "had to be an animal from present or past Earth."
IIRC, in 3.0, they had 'animal' for RL animals and 'beast' for made-up animals, but in-world, there's really no difference between the two.
Modules Overlord
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As long as a creature follows all the rules for an animal, the animal type is the most logical creature type for it. While we normally use real-world animals as the basis for creatures of the animal type (largely because there is SUCH a wide variety of animals in reality), that's a tendency, not a rule. For the gorthek, in particular, what was thematically most appropriate was an animal influenced by those of the real world, but different from them.