Ekembo nyanzae
Ekembo nyanzae, originally classed as a species of Proconsul, is a species of fossil primate first discovered by Louis Leakey on Rusinga Island in 1942, which he published in Nature in 1943. It is also known by the name Dryopithecus africanus. A joint publication of Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and Louis Leakey in 1951, "The Miocene Hominoidea of East Africa", first defines Proconsul nyanzae. In 1965 Simons and Pilbeam replaced Proconsul with Dryopithecus, using the same species names.

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- EkemboPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Primates
- Life habit
- arborealPBDB, for Primates
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 13.82 Mya and 11.63 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Ekembo nyanzae on record, most of them in the Miocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
1 occurrences- Miocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
- Upper Koru Series Formation · Kericho Phonolites Group1
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The named rock units Ekembo nyanzae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Ekembo nyanzae and its relatives
MioceneWhere Ekembo nyanzae and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
55 taxa- Accipitridae1 site
- Afrocricetodontidae indet.1 site
- Afrotragulus parvus1 site
- Amphechinus1 site
- Amphicyonidae1 site
- Anomaluridae1 site
- Barbourofelinae1 site
- Bathyergidae1 site
- Bunolistriodon1 site
- Caprotragoides1 site
- Chamaeleonidae1 site
- Chiroptera1 site
- Climaoceras gentryi1 site
- Crocodylus1 site
- Deinotherium1 site
- Diamantomys1 site
- Dissopsalis1 site
- Dissopsalis pyroclasticus1 site
- Dorcatherium chappuisi1 site
- Eotragus1 site
- Gazella1 site
- Genetta1 site
- Giraffokeryx primaevus1 site
- Gomphotheriidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Ekembo nyanzae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 reference- New Potassium-Argon Age Determinations Relevant to the Miocene Fossil Mammal Sequence in East Africa1
Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Ekembo nyanzae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Ekembo nyanzae · nmk:ru:5872
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itEkembo through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Le Gros Clark and Leakey 1950)