Proconsul africanus
Proconsul africanus was an ape which lived from about 23 to 14 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. It was a fruit eater and its brain was larger than that of a monkey, although probably not as large as that of a modern ape.
| Proconsul africanus Temporal range: Miocene | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Haplorhini |
| Infraorder: | Simiiformes |
| Family: | †Proconsulidae |
| Genus: | †Proconsul |
| Species: | †P. africanus |
| Binomial name | |
| †Proconsul africanus Hopwood, 1933b | |
It was named by paleontologist Arthur Hopwood in 1933 after a number of 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.
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