Its official - you're an ape!

[Edmund Blackadder]

Scientists Unveil Missing Link In Evolution

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution. Skip related content

The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years - but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York.

The discovery of the 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' - dubbed Ida - is described by experts as the "eighth wonder of the world".

They say its impact on the world of palaeontology will be "somewhat like an asteroid falling down to Earth".

Researchers say proof of this transitional species finally confirms Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, and the then radical, outlandish ideas he came up with during his time aboard the Beagle.

Sir David Attenborough said Darwin "would have been thrilled" to have seen the fossil - and says it tells us who we are and where we came from.

"This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals," he said.

"This is the one that connects us directly with them.

"Now people can say 'okay we are primates, show us the link'.

"The link they would have said up to now is missing - well it's no longer missing."

A team of the world's leading fossil experts, led by Professor Jorn Hurum, of Norway's National History Museum, have been secretly researching the 1ft 9in-tall young female monkey for the past two years.

And now it has been transported to New York under high security and unveiled to the world during the bicentenary of Darwin's birth.

Later this month, it will be exhibited for one day only at the Natural History Museum in London before being returned to Oslo.

Scientists say Ida - squashed to the thickness of a beer mat by the immense passage of time - is the most complete primate fossil ever found.

With her human-like nails instead of claws, and opposable big toes, she is placed at the very root of human evolution when early primates first developed features that would eventually develop into our own.

Another important discovery is the shape of the talus bone in her foot, which humans still have in their feet millions of lifetimes later.

Ida was unearthed by an amateur fossil-hunter some 25 years ago in Messel pit, an ancient crater lake near Frankfurt, Germany, famous for its fossils.

She was cleaned and set in polyester resin - and incredibly, was hung on a mystery German collector's wall for 20 years.

Sky News sources say the owner had no idea of the unique fossil's significance and simply admired it like a cherished Van Gogh or Picasso painting.

But in 2006, Ida came into the hands of private dealer Thomas Perner, who presented her to Prof Hurum at the annual Hamburg Fossil and Mineral Fair in Germany - a centre for the murky world of fossil-trading.

Prof Hurum said when he first saw the blueprint for evolution - the "most beautiful fossil worldwide" - he could not sleep for two days.

A home movie records the dramatic moment.

"This is really something that the world has never seen before, this is a unique specimen, totally unique," he says, clearly emotional.

He says he knew she should be saved for science rather than end up hidden from the world in a wealthy private collector's vault.

But the dealer's asking price was more than $1 million (£660,000) - ten times the amount even the rarest of fossils fetch on the black market.

Eventually, after six months of negotiations, he managed to raise the cash in Norway and brought Ida to Oslo.

Prof Hurum - who last summer dug up the fossil remains of a 50ft marine monster called Predator X from the permafrost on Svalbard, a Norwegian island close to the North Pole - then assembled a "dream team" of experts who worked in secret for two years.

They included palaeontologist Dr Jens Franzen, Dr Holly Smith, of the University of Michigan, and Philip Gingerich, president-elect of the US Paleontological Society.

Researchers could prove the fossil was genuine through X-rays, knowing it is impossible to fake the inner structure of a bone.

Through radiometric dating of Messel's volcanic rocks, they discovered Ida lived 47 million years ago in the Eocene period.

This was when tropical forests stretched right to the poles, and South America was still drifting and had yet to make contact with North America.

During that period, the first whales, horses, bats and monkeys emerged, and the early primates branched into two groups - one group lived on mainly as lemurs, and the second developed into monkeys, apes and humans.

The experts concluded Ida was not simply a lemur but a 'lemur monkey', displaying a mixture of both groups, and therefore putting her at the very branch of the human line.

"When Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, he said a lot about transitional species," said Prof Hurum

"...and he said that will never be found, a transitional species, and his whole theory will be wrong, so he would be really happy to live today when we publish Ida.

"This fossil is really a part of our history; this is part of our evolution, deep, deep back into the aeons of time, 47 million years ago.

"It's part of our evolution that's been hidden so far, it's been hidden because all the other specimens are so incomplete.

"They are so broken there's almost nothing to study and now this wonderful fossil appears and it makes the story so much easier to tell, so it's really a dream come true."

Up until now, the most famous fossil primate in the world has been Lucy, a 3.18-million-year-old hominid found in Ethiopia in 1974.

She was then our earliest known ancestor, and only 40% complete.

But at 95% complete, Ida was so well preserved in the mud at the bottom of the volcanic lake, there is even evidence of her fur shadow and remains of her last meal.

From this they concluded she was a leaf and fruit eater, and probably lived in the trees around the lake.

The absence of a bacculum (penis bone) confirmed she was female, and her milk teeth put her age at about nine-months-old - in maturity, equivalent to a six-year-old human child.

This was the same age as Prof Hurum's daughter Ida, and he named the fossil after her.

The study is being published and put online by the Public Library of Science, a leading academic journal with offices in Britain and the US.

Co-author of the scientific paper, Prof Gingerich, likens its importance to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian artefact found in 1799, which allowed us to decipher hieroglyphic writing.

One clue to Ida's fate - and her remarkable preservation as our oldest ancestor - was her badly fractured left wrist.

The team believes this stopped her from climbing and she had to emerge from the trees to drink water from the 250-metre-deep lake.

They think she was overcome by carbon dioxide gas from the crater, and sunk to the bottom where she was preserved in the mud as a time capsule - and a snapshot of evolution.

But amazingly this final piece of Darwin's jigsaw was almost lost to science when German authorities tried to turn Messel into a massive landfill rubbish dump.

Eventually, after campaigning by Dr Franzen, the plans were rejected and the fossil-rich lake was designated a World Heritage Site.

But no doubt there would have been one person happy for the missing link to have remained hidden.

When Darwin famously told the Bishop of Worcester's wife about his theory of evolution, she remarked: "Descended from the apes! My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it will not become generally known."

Now, it certainly is.

FINALLY !

 

[Big Damn Hero]

This is really exciting, although I doubt I won't be able to sleep for days because of it 😉

 

[Silum]

Interesting. Though the amount of times scientists have 'unveiled the missing link' ...its only because they have so many damn missing links!

 

[white avenger]

I've always believed that attempting to establish some andient "missing link" between modern man and apes was at the very least a terrible insult. To the apes.

 

[Mr. Pointy]

Ook! Ook! OOK!! OOK!!

 

[Tueuse de Vampires]

And I always thought Homer Simpson was the missing link 🙁

 

[Revolver]

You damn dirty apes.

 

[InsaneMystic]

Coolies! No doubt the hardcore fundamentalist Creationists will call it a fake mislead created by Satan, though. 😀

 

[BillyidolwannaB]

This is a mislead created by satan. Nah, im kidding. Coolio, not that i needed proof to believe we evolved but its nice to have some.

 

[Silum]

Here's a photo..

sorta looks like something I would have nightmares about 😛

Coolies! No doubt the hardcore fundamentalist Creationists will call it a fake mislead created by Satan, though. 😀

Right on cue InsaneMystic... right on cue.

Clean teeth...check
take a shower...check
Make fun of the christians...check

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

Here's a photo..



sorta looks like something I would have nightmares about 😛

I firmly believe it now - she looks like an ex of mine!

Right on cue InsaneMystic... right on cue.

Clean teeth...check
take a shower...check
Make fun of the christians...check

Of course Silum, didn't you realise its perfectly fine to take pot shots at Christians here. You should read a Harry Potter conversation I had on these boards once.

 

[atticus]

grr arrgh !

 

[Willowsgirl]

Coolies! No doubt the hardcore fundamentalist Creationists will call it a fake mislead created by Satan, though. 😀

I don't have an issue with religious people as a general rule. It is the ones that see fit to tell me that I'm going to hell because of who I am that I have an issue with. And to them I say IN YOUR FACE YA JERKS! Although if all the people who are going to hell that they say are going to hell, I think I would rather go there then heaven. All my friends and family are going to be there and I would rather be suffering with them than be alone in heaven.

 

[Harley]

Although I wouldnt consider myself a "hardcore fundamentalist Creationists", I am going to say that I'm waiting for the news report to follow this that says "haha, just kidding". Rememeber when they found Big Foot last year?

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

Although I wouldnt consider myself a "hardcore fundamentalist Creationists", I am going to say that I'm waiting for the news report to follow this that says "haha, just kidding". Rememeber when they found Big Foot last year?

See, this is where I have a problem.

Big Foot has always been some fantasists dream with no actual proof it exists.
It seems to me Big Foot and 'The Missing Link' are connected by people who want them to be one and the same, but they really aren't.

The Missing Link for human evolution must have existed, IF evolution is accurate because there was an obvious hole in the theory.

Big Foot is a nice little story to tell around camp fires and make movies about - thats all.

 

[Harley]

It seems to me Big Foot and 'The Missing Link' are connected by people who want them to be one and the same, but they really aren't.

Not my intention.

The Missing Link for human evolution must have existed, IF evolution is accurate because there was an obvious hole in the theory.

Big Foot is a nice little story to tell around camp fires and make movies about - thats all.

Well yeah, the "if evolution is accurate" is kinda the main part of the debate.


Also, I always thought the missing link was the link between whatever supposedly crawled out of the soup and the ape, not the ape and the human.

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

Not my intention.




Well yeah, the "if evolution is accurate" is kinda the main part of the debate.


Also, I always thought the missing link was the link between whatever supposedly crawled out of the soup and the ape, not the ape and the human.

Then if that wasn't your intention, forgive me.

One of things people do seem to be adding to this discussion is the Big Foot all over the internet, so to see it used here, well I just wanted to nip it in the bud.

And no, the missing link has always been this bridge between the lemur and the monkey.

We have the fossils and basic understand to show how we went from the Primordial soup to land dwelling mammal, but there was a gap that this little baby fills.

 

[InsaneMystic]

Right on cue InsaneMystic... right on cue.

Clean teeth...check
take a shower...check
Make fun of the christians...check

I make fun of fundamentalists - people who allow some kind of dogma to relieve them off the necessity of their own critical thinking, be they Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or whatever. Every one of those groups has their share of both smart people and, um, not so smart people in them, and I think the latter ones in either are fair game for not being taken too seriously in a debate, most especially if they try to pass religious dogma for scientific fact (as a lot of, though not all, Creationists do). You don't have to be fundamentalist to be a Christian; if you're both, then indeed, I doubt your intelligence - but that assumption of mine won't be based on the fact of you being a Christian. 😉

Anyway, you know I have even more of a beef with "scientistic Atheism" than with Creationism, right? At least the latter does nothing to hide the fact that all it has is faith, so you're merely evil if you disbelieve them. For the scientistic Atheist, you're a dumbass if you don't say as they say, which I consider the worse insult. 😉

Also, I hold the belief that God is the one who ignited the Big Bang and set up the natural laws, including evolution... so that makes me a soft-core creationist myself. ^^

 

[Silum]

I make fun of fundamentalists - people who allow some kind of dogma to relieve them off the necessity of their own critical thinking, be they Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or whatever. Every one of those groups has their share of both smart people and, um, not so smart people in them, and I think the latter ones in either are fair game for not being taken too seriously in a debate, most especially if they try to pass religious dogma for scientific fact (as a lot of, though not all, Creationists do). You don't have to be fundamentalist to be a Christian; if you're both, then indeed, I doubt your intelligence - but that assumption of mine won't be based on the fact of you being a Christian. 😉

I dont see the need to make fun of people for their belief, but you're right if it clouds critical thinking.

Clearly you don't know what fundamentalist christianity is all about and have just taken it as a negative connotation (you can't be blamed for that, since i too use it) rather than a view on Christianity.

I wont lay out my beliefs again since i've already done so here. Imo, being fundamentalist is just being consistent in your belief and your worldview. If you're a Christian, you follow the bible. You can't decide that some bits are valid and some aren't else there would be no consistency to your belief. So being a fundamentalist Christian is just being a rational Christian if anything, not an irrational one.

I do find it strange that you 'doubt the intelligence' of someone who has thought about their worldview to a logical conclusion.

Also, I hold the belief that God is the one who ignited the Big Bang and set up the natural laws, including evolution... so that makes me a soft-core creationist myself. ^^

Im not far off that, if only for a little more involvement from God in line with the bible.

 

[Edmund Blackadder]

At least we live in a world where Mrs Garrison is wrong even if that does mean we're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel.