Proconsul (mammal)
| Proconsul | |
|---|---|
.JPG)
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| Proconsul skeleton reconstruction | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Haplorhini |
| Infraorder: | Simiiformes |
| Family: | †Proconsulidae |
| Subfamily: | †Proconsulinae |
| Genus: | †Proconsul Hopwood, 1933 |
| Species | |
Proconsul is an
The
Description
The genus had a mixture of
Proconsul's monkey-like features include
Discovery and classification
The first specimen, a partial jaw discovered in 1909 by a gold prospector at
Hopwood in 1931 had discovered the fossils of three individuals while expeditioning with
Other fossils discovered later were initially classified as africanus and subsequently reclassified; that is, the total pool of fossils originally considered africanus was split and the fragments lumped with other finds to create a new species. For example, Mary Leakey's famous find of 1948 began as africanus and was split from it to be lumped with Thomas Whitworth's finds of 1951 as heseloni by Alan Walker in 1993. This process creates some confusion for the public, which is told that africanus became heseloni. The finds from Koru and Songhor are still considered africanus. Four species are still defined even though many fossils have jumped species.[3]
The family of Proconsulidae was first proposed by Louis Leakey in 1963,[4] a decade after he and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark had defined africanus, nyanzae and major. It was not immediately accepted but ultimately prevailed.
The history of
Reassigned species
The species Proconsul heseloni and P. nyanzae have been reclassified in the new genus Ekembo.[7]
Notes
- ^ a b Morell 1996, p. 130
- ^ Walker & Shipman 2005
- ^ Tuttle 2006, Taxonomic Shuffles, Ancestors, and Functional Interpretations: 1960–1999, p. 17
- ^ "Proconsulidae". Palaeodatabase.
- ^ A recapitulation of the changing classifications of fossils at some time regarded as Proconsul can be found in Tuttle 2006
- clades.
- PMID 25962549.
References
- Andrews, Peter; Martin, Lawrence (January 1987). "Cladistic relationships of extant and fossil hominoids". Journal of Human Evolution. 16 (1): 101–118. .
- Morell, Virginia (1996). Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind's Beginnings. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780684824703.
- Tuttle, Russel H. (2006). "Seven Decades of East African Miocene Anthropoid Studies" (PDF). In Ishida, Hidemi; Tuttle, Russell; Pickford, Martin; Ogihara, Naomichi; Nakatsukasa, Masato (eds.). Human Origins and Environmental Backgrounds. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-29638-8.
- Walker, Alan; Shipman, Pat (2005). The Ape in the Tree: An Intellectual & Natural History of Proconsul. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01675-0.