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- Title
Climbing the evolutionary tree.
- Authors
Andrews, Peter
- Abstract
This article presents information on the book "The Ape in the Tree: An Intellectual and Natural History of Proconsul," by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman. The book focuses on the evolution of apes. What's more, it has been at the centre of feuds, deaths, disputes over ownership, and rivalries between some of the biggest personalities in anthropology. In many of these, Alan Walker has been involved at first hand, and he brings a strongly personalized view of these events to this book. It is first and foremost an account of his own involvement with the discovery and description of some of the best specimens of Proconsul yet found. Having said this, Walker makes it clear right from the start that this is no scientific treatise, but a semi-popular account of early ape evolution. His mentor was John Napier, a larger-than-life character who had enormous influence on primate studies in the middle of the twentieth century. There is also a failure to extend the approach of functional morphology to its third aspect: interaction with the environment. There is little more than anecdotal discussion about the environment that Proconsul lived in, other than saying that there was forest and trees for it to move around in.
- Subjects
BIOLOGICAL evolution; PROCONSUL (Fossil primates); FOSSIL apes; WALKER, Alan, 1938-2017; NATURAL history; BOOKS; NAPIER, John
- Publication
Nature, 2005, Vol 435, Issue 7038, p24
- ISSN
0028-0836
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/435024a