Photo of the Day #41: Proconsul

Update will be a bit sparse today; I'm headed off to the AMNH in New York City with the undergraduate anthropology club, but hopefully I'll get some photos up later this evening when I arrive home. Among my favorite 4th floor fossils I'll also be headed back to the human evolution exhibit where the above fossil, the skull of Proconsul is displayed. Initially discovered in 1909, there are now as many as four species of this Miocene primate, although debate still goes on as to whether it is actually an ape (putting it closer to the line that led to hominids) or closer to Old World Monkeys (putting it closer to Aegyptopithecus). Interestingly enough, however, the fossils have enough ape-like features that the name Proconsul was chosen as it would mean "Before Consul," the Consul in question being a chimpanzee in the London Zoo.