“Ida” not a missing link
at 12:22 pm on Sunday, 7 March 2010
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/ida-not-a-missing-link/
On May 20 of last year, at a remarkable press conference in New York, a group of researchers announced—with much ballyhoo—that they’d found a 47-million-year-old primate fossil named Darwinius masillae(nicknamed “Ida”). Ida, the finest fossil primate in existence, was touted loudly as the missing link between the two major branches of primates, the Haplorhini (anthropoids [apes and monkeys] and tarsiers), and the Strepsirrhini (lemurs and lorises; see figure below). Concurrent with the press conference was a History Channel documentary and a book about Ida, Colin Tudge’s The Link, that proclaimed, with much heavy breathing, that Ida was, as one of the earliest primate ancestors of our own species, an earthshaking discovery (see my review of the book here).
(WhyEvolution is True.com, March 6, 2010)