De Loys’ Ape

By Bora Zivkovic | October 10, 2012 |

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Image of the Week #63, October 10th, 2012:

From: De Loys’ Ape by David Bressan at History of Geology.

Source: The photography of de Loys‘ ape – “Ameranthropoides loysi”, from MONTANDON 1929 (image in public domain).

From David Bressan’s History of Geology comes the strange tale of DeLoys’ Ape, one of two bipedal, unusually large monkeys discovered by members of an oil expedition in South America in 1920. The men shot and killed one of the two and propped up the corpse as evidence of this new species. Oddly, the discoverer, de Loys, refused to speak further of the incident, but recent research has revealed why. Read the full story at History of Geology…

About the Author: Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web. Follow on Twitter @boraz.

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The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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