In 1903, Consul the chimpanzee performed at the Folies Bergère; he appeared in evening dress, played the piano, rode a bicycle, poured himself a drink, ate a meal with a knife and fork, undressed, stood on his head, and somersaulted into bed. (I can’t do a lot of those things. I’ll let you figure out which). He must have made quite an impression on Folies audiences (who, after all, probably hadn’t come there to see a chimp, even a disrobing one) because 30 years later an African fossil of a creature thought to be ancestral to chimpanzees received the name Proconsul africanus from the discoverer.


Alan Walker is a vertebrate paleontologist; Pat Shipman is his wife and a talented author; together they produced The Ape in the Tree. Shipman (who I am embarrassed to admit I once thought was male) is the author of the excellent Taking Wing, about Archaeopteryx; The Ape in the Tree is a similar thorough treatment of the history of Proconsul paleontology, the animal’s autecology, and its systematic position. There’s considerable technical detail, including diagrams of the width of the last caudal vertebrae (to aid in understanding how the animal bent to feed) and histograms of body mass based on femur length (to decide how many species of Proconsul existed. For those who might be interested in such things, the title is a pun; Proconsul is in the evolutionary “tree”, and the best fossils were found in, literally, a tree (the fossilized stump of a hollow tree that accumulated various animal remains). No weaknesses I noted; highly recommended. ( )

Well written and interesting, but not a stunner. ( )