Proconsul africanus
|
Proconsul africanus Temporal range: Miocene |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Superfamily: | Hominoidea |
| Family: | †Proconsulidae |
| Subfamily: | †Proconsulinae |
| Genus: | †Proconsul |
| Species: | †P. africanus |
| Binomial name | |
|
Proconsul africanus Hopwood, 1933b |
|
Proconsul africanus is an ape which lived from about 23 to 14 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. It was a fruit eater and had a brain larger than a monkey, although probably not as large as a modern ape.
It was named by paleontologist Arthur Hopwood in 1933 after chimpanzees all called Consul, which performed human like circus acts, such as riding a bicycle and playing the piano, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other species of the genus Proconsul have since been discovered.
The Leakey expedition of 1947–1948 to Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria uncovered more species of Proconsul. Louis Leakey made an especially complete find of Proconsul there in 1948, which was for a number of decades labeled africanus, but was reclassified as heseloni in 1993 by Alan Walker. In 1951 Leakey and Le Gros Clark placed Hopwood's Xenopithecus koruensis ("strange ape from Koru, Kenya") with africanus. In 1951 also T. Whitworth found more Proconsul on Rusinga, which he considered africanus, but they were lumped with 1992 finds by Walker to form heseloni.
The 18-million-year-old fossil species has been considered a possible ancestor of both great and lesser apes, and of humans. The paleontologist Louis Leakey, who was one of the foremost fossil-hunters of the 20th century and a champion of evolution, said:
An especially important creature was Proconsul africanus. This, many authorities once concluded, gave us an indication of the common stock for apes and men. We have good forelimb bones for it, and in 1948 on Rusinga Island Louis [Leakey] discovered a skull, the first nearly complete specimen ever found. Its canine teeth suggest an ape's, while its forehead reminds us of our own. It seems to me, however, to be neither an ancestral ape, nor yet an ancestor of man, but a side branch with characteristics of both stocks..."
Leakey changed his mind a few times about the exact classification of Proconsul, as did most other palaeontologists. Opinion currently favors a position between the monkeys and the apes.
...
Wikipedia