Named After a Chimp

A chimpanzee from London gave it's name to a group of ape-like animals that lived 10-25 million years ago in Africa. In 1931, the fragmentary remains of a creature thought to be an ancestor of modern chimpanzees were found in Kenya, Arthur Hopwood, of the Natural History Museum in London, suggested that the creature should be given the generic name Preconsul - after Consul, one of the chimps then in London Zoo. Several forms of Preconsul fossils have since been found, including, in 1948, a nearly complete skull of a species now known as Preconsul africanus. The Preconsul fossil apes are now often included in the genus Dryopithecus (from the Greek “drus” meaning “tree”). The genus is so called because the fossil often occur with oak leaves.