Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
The Ape in the Tree is a fine account of new ways to puzzle out the behaviors of fossilized animals from odd scraps of bones. Rebecca Wigod - Vancouver Sun
Review
The Ape in the Tree is an engaging exposition of how fossils are found, excavated, studied and evaluated. This memoir of great scholarship and high adventure, is a must read for anyone interested in the plight of the paleontologist. Donald Johanson, Director Of The Institute Of Human Origins
Review
Books about how science is done are usually interesting and The Ape in the Tree is no exception. Allan Walker and Pat Shipman successfully convey the fun of finding old bones without minimizing the hard work and tedium that so often characterize fieldwork. Richard Leakey
Review
The Ape in the Tree, by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman, is an engaging chronicle that centers on the discovery and scientific interpretation of one of those early apes [of the Miocene epoch]...The Ape in the Tree combines adventure story with accounts of the painstaking work that underpins scientific progress. It tells of the associated history of scientific thoughts, of their development in the light of new evidence and of their subjection to preconceptions and personal ambition. Authenticity is guaranteed, as one of the authors, Walker, has been involved with the story of Proconsul for some 40 years. His anecdotes convey the excitement of digging up evidence of ancient life and the associated frustrations ('This is the list of break-downs on a brand-new machine, just for my memory when I talk to the manufacturers...'), unsettling moments ('When I looked at the belts closely, I realised they were leather strings from which dangled peculiar wrinkled objects: the testicles of the men they had killed. Their stares and their belts made us rather nervous.'), and occasionally dangers ('Get that plane up fast, Richard (Leakey)!'). Zach Zorich - Discover
Review
The Ape in the Treeis an engaging exposition of how fossils are found, excavated, studied and evaluated. This memoir of great scholarship and high adventure, is a must read for anyone interested in the plight of the paleontologist.
Review
Walker's semi-popular account of this important fossil ape will be an accessible and entertaining read for the educated layman. Peter Andrews
Review
The authors' enthusiasm for the topic is contagious, and their ability to transform often-dry paleontological analysis into a potential screenplay for CSI: Kenya is admirable. Christophe Soligo - Times Higher Education Supplement
Review
Proconsul lays claim to being the best known ape in the fossil record and Alan Walker and Pat Shipman tell the story of this prized fossil superbly well. Wonderfully engaging and insightful, The Ape in the Tree is sure to become a classic in the literature on human origins. Roger Lewin, Author Of < i=""> principles Of Hum an Evolution <>
Review
Proconsul is the last common ancestor of humans and apes. Walker and Shipman, American husband-and-wife anthropologists, found 18-million-year-old Proconsul fossils in Africa and then set about to understand them. Their account is part adventure story, part cutting-edge science. Nature
Review
Named after a performing chimp at the Folies-Bergère in Paris, Proconsul is a common ancestor of apes and humans that lived in Africa between 21 million and 14 million years ago. In this memoir, paleontotogists Walker and Shipman splice stories of their adventures excavating the animal with an analysis of its biology--as revealed by current research and by Mary Leakey, who discovered the first Proconsul skull in Kenya in 1948. Robert N. Proctor - Science
Synopsis
This book offers a unique insider's perspective on the unfolding discovery of a crucial link in our evolution. It is written in the voice of 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 and its attributes have profound implications for the very definition of humanness.
Synopsis
2009 W.W. Howells Book Prize, Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association
About the Author
Alan Walkeris Professor of Anthropology at <>Pennsylvania State University. A Royal Society and MacArthur fellow, he is a member of the <>National Academy of Sciencesand the <>American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1996, he and Pat Shipman won the prestigious Rhone-Poulenc Award for The Wisdom of the Bones. Pat Shipmanis Professor of Anthropology at <>Pennsylvania State University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including the 1997 Rhône-Poulenc Prize for The Wisdom of the Bones(coauthored with Alan Walker) and the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Science for Taking Wing, which was also a finalist for the Los Angeles TimesBook Award and a New York TimesNotable Book of the Year in 1998.
Table of Contents
Author's Note
Prologue
1. Luck and Unluck
2. Love and the Tree
3. An Arm and a Leg
4. The Lost and the Found
5. Back to the Miocene
6. An Embarrassment of Riches
7. How Did It Move?
8. How Many Proconsuls?
9. How Many Apes?
10. Something to Chew On
11. More on Teeth
12. Listening to the Past
Pronunciation of African Place Names
Notes
Index
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by Pat Shipman