Latest Proconsul Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In 2002 a fossil specimen of an ape skeleton was unearthed in Spain. The researchers who discovered the remains assigned it a new genus and species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, estimating that the ape lived about 11.9 million years ago. The researchers argued that the ape could be the last common ancestor of modern great apes, which include chimpanzees, orangutans, bonobos, gorillas and humans. Now a new study led by a University...

CT scans of fossilized primate skulls or skull fragments from both the Old and New Worlds may shed light on how these extinct animals moved, especially for those species without any known remains, according to an international team of researchers. The researchers looked at the bony labyrinth in fossil remains and compared them to CT scans previously obtained from living primate species. The bony labyrinth of the inner ear is made up of the cochlea -- the major organ of hearing -- the...