The Lawrence Jacobsen Library
Books Received (Primate-Science/PrimateLit)

Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales

THE APE IN THE TREE:


An Intellectual and Natural History of Proconsul


By Alan Walker and Pat Shipman


The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press


FROM THE INSIDE COVER


This book offers a unique insider's perspective on the unfolding discovery 
of a crucial link in our evolution: Proconsul, a fossil ape named 
whimsically after a performing chimpanzee called Consul.


The Ape in the Tree is written in the voice of Alan Walker, whose 
involvement with Proconsul began when his graduate supervisor analyzed the 
tree-climbing adaptations in the arm and hand of this extinct creature. 
Today, Proconsul is the best-known fossil ape in the world.


The history of ideas is set against the vivid adventures of Walker's fossil 
hunting expeditions in remote regions of Africa, where the team met with 
violent thunderstorms, dangerous wildlife, and people isolated from the 
Western world. Analysis of the thousands of new Proconsul specimens they 
recovered provides revealing glimpses of the life of this last common 
ancestor between apes and humans.


The attributes of Proconsul have profound implications for the very 
definition of humanness. This book speaks not only of an ape in a tree but 
also of the ape in our tree.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS


Alan Walker is a renowned paleontologist and a recipient of a MacArthur 
"genius " award. Pat Shipman is an award-winning science writer and 
anthropologist and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Author's Note ix


Prologue 1


1 Luck and Unluck 11


2 Love and the Tree 28


3 An Arm and a Leg 53


4 The Lost and the Found 71


5 Back to the Miocene 87


6 An Embarrassment of Riches 113


7 How Did It Move? 136


8 How Many Proconsuls? 153


9 How Many Apes? 169


10 Something to Chew On 200


11 More on Teeth 221


12 Listening to the Past 238


Epilogue 249


Pronunciation of African Words and Place Names 251


Notes 253


Index 277


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HOW TO ORDER


Harvard University Press


79 Garden Street


Cambridge, MA 02138


Phone: (617) 496-1340


Fax: 617.496.2550


Publication date: April 15, 2005


ISBN 0-674-01675-0


Price $26.95


Direct link to Harvard University Press website: www.hup.harvard.edu


Direct link to online catalog: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WALAPE.html