Moon-Watcher

Moon-Watcher, or Moonwatcher, is an alpha featured in the introduction of Kubrick and Stanley’s 2001 project.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Moon-Watcher and his tribe are inhabitants of Africa, 3 MYA. He becomes the new alpha at about the age of twenty-five, after his father Old One dies. Moon-Watcher and his tribe become the first ones to encounter a “New Rock”, a fifteen foot tall monolith that appears to impart intelligence upon them. It then dawns on Moon-Watcher: the capability to improvise an object into a weapon.

Subsequently, after Moon-Watcher realizes that a large bone could serve as a way to catch a meal, it then dawns on him that he might be able to take back a waterhole from a rival tribe that pushed him out earlier. Thus, Moon-Watcher and members of his tribe are equipped with bone weapons to take back the waterhole. The success of the occupation results in the death of the rival leader One-Ear.

Appearance
Moon-Watcher stands nearly five feet high, the highest stance above all the others, and is even known to be the only one capable enough to stand upright. He is badly undernourished and weighs in at over a hundred pounds. He is hairy, with a muscular build halfway between ape and man, but his head is much nearer to man than ape. The forehead is low with ridges over the eye sockets, with dark, deep-set eyes.

In the film, Moon-Watcher was played by actor Daniel Richter.

Non-canon
Fans attribute Moon-Watcher and his tribe to  the first known upright walking ape.