Proconsulidae is an early family of primates that lived during the Miocene epoch in Kenya, and was restricted to Africa.

The Folies Bergère of 1903 in Paris had a popular performing chimpanzee named Consul, and so did the Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, England, in 1894.

On the latter's death in that year Ben Brierley wrote a commemorative poem wondering where the "Missing Link" between chimpanzees and men was.

[1] The family of Proconsulidae was first proposed by Louis Leakey,[3] eleven years after he and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark had defined africanus, nyanzae and major.

[4] For example, in 1987 Peter Andrews and Lawrence Martin, established palaeontologists, took the point of view that Proconsul is not a hominoid, but is a sister taxon to it.