Proconsul skull from Rusinga Island
Cráneo de Proconsul de la isla Rusinga
- Date
- 1948 · confidence high
- Place
- Rusinga Island, Lake Victoria, Homa Bay, Kenya
- Credited to
- Mary Leakey and Louis Leakey
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
In 1948 Mary Leakey found at Rusinga an almost complete skull of an Early Miocene ape (c. 18 Ma), the most complete fossil ape of that age known at the time. Proconsul lacked a tail and had primitive catarrhine features, very close to the base of the ape lineage.
The genus was named in 1933 by Hopwood from remains at Koru; the 1948 skull is assigned to Proconsul heseloni. It is debated whether it is a basal ape or a stem catarrhine.
What it led to
- a reference for hominoid evolution
- the start of the Leakeys' fieldwork in Kenya
- debate on the African origin of the apes