Monday, June 01, 2009

New Ameranthropoides book

I received this e-mail this morning:

The new book about the “de Loys´ ape” case is available:

Ameranthropoides loysi Montadon 1929: The History of a Primatological Fraud
Ameranthropoides loysi Montadon 1929: La historia de un fraude primatológico
by Bernardo Urbani & Ángel L. Viloria.
2008. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Editorial LibrosEnRed. 296 pages.
(US/UK-based print-on-demand book)

It has a foreword by the anthropologist Robert W. Sussman. This book is bilingual: English and Spanish.

This history reviews the information published on the controversy of the discovery of an alleged Neotropical ape, that resulted in one of the most notorious scientific frauds of the 20th Century. Ameranthropoides loysi Montandon 1929: The History of a Primatological Fraud reviews the information published on the controversy of the discovery of an alleged Neotropical anthropoid ape, that resulted in one of the most notorious scientific frauds of the 20th Century. Such finding supposedly occurred either in 1917 or 1918 while oil prospecting in the forests of the Tarra River region, located in the southwestern part of Lake Maracaibo, Zulia state, Venezuela.

This case was as much discussed as it was unresolved. Detailed analysis of the archival sources suggested that the naming of such a primate was a fraud orchestrated by the Swiss physician George Montandon and de Loys himself, resulting in one of the most notorious scientific frauds of the 20th Century. This investigation provides previously unpublished information about this case -whose development seems to be resolved in Venezuela, through the account of a third witness, the Venezuelan physician Enrique Tejera.

I have not seen a copy of this book yet, so I cannot either endorse it or otherwise. However, it does look like a smashing piece of work, and I will be doing my best to get hold of a copy and do a proper review as soon as I can...

No comments:

Post a Comment