Is Ida the ‘Missing link’ ?

[Malic]

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“On the whole I think the evidence is less than convincing,” said Chris Gilbert, a paleoanthropologist at Yale University. “They make an intriguing argument but I would definitely say that the consensus is not in favor of the hypothesis they're proposing.” . . .

“The PR campaign on this fossil is I think more of a story than the fossil itself,” said anthropologist Matt Cartmill of Duke University in North Carolina. “It’s a very beautiful fossil, but I didn’t see anything in this paper that told me anything decisive that was new.”

Most experts agree that the find is significant, if only for its impressive degree of completeness, but some were put off by the bells and whistles that went along with the publicity campaign around Ida. . . .

“It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make,” [Carnegie Museum of Natural History curator of vertebrate paleontology Chris] Beard said.

“Amid Media Circus, Scientists Doubt ‘Ida’ Is Your Ancestor
Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience, May 20, 2009

[Malic]

Science is supposed to be methodical, and usually it is, sometimes to the point of being dull. But there are times when a little hoopla is called for. Major discoveries that rewrite the textbooks deserve big headlines and ubiquitous media coverage and lots of scientific slaps on the back and all that.

The discovery of the “Ida” fossil, announced this week as though the 47-million-year-old lemur-like female were a rock star, seemed at first like one to celebrate.

Today we know better. . . . [T]here are doubts about whether [humans are] really descended from Ida. Problem is, most of the coverage is done, and the public could be left with the impression that Ida is a rock-solid missing link in the human evolutionary chain. . . .

“It’s not a missing link, it’s not even a terribly close relative to monkeys, apes and humans, which is the point they’re trying to make,” said Chris Beard, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. . . .

The debacle started to unfold when the finding, cloaked in secrecy while a media engine was being primed, leaked out in The Wall Street Journal, and then in London’s Daily Mail. Then The New York Times wrote about the media circus that was to ensue. All this was published before anyone but the research team (and its tightly controlled media team) knew the details of the finding. . . .

Ida’s unveiling was highly scripted (with some “Barnum and Bailey aspects,” said paleontologist Richard Kay of Duke University). More important, it can now be said the findings may well have been significantly overstated. We won’t know for sure until further research is done. But if this event causes the public to distrust science and media, that distrust is well placed.

“Ida Fossil Hype Went Too Far”
Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience, May 20, 2009

[gkoopir]

maybe that's just another extinct species/creature..but definitely not human related.

i agree... i still believe in bible sa Genesis. That god created man from his image and likeness.
Dli jud ma comprehend dali sa tao ang mga words sa GOD..

[vanschen]

naa DNA analysis?

asa man c Fe ug c Lorna? ngek ngek.

[neoraising]

Whether it is a missing link or not is really moot since there is no clear cut evolutionary line in the first place..i mean humans,neanderthals and Homo erectus co-existed at one point in time..more or less, human evolution is shaped by the need to adapt to the harsh environment but why have the need to evolve when the circumstances are agreeable and friendly..just like the pygmy men and Homo erectus found primarily in the Indonesian island chain..these species were isolated and as a result didn't evolve and were found to have lived until the time that Homo sapiens emerged..

so "Ida" might as well be a species that evolved under different circumstances or failed to evolve higher to human-like forms..

[Kenshiro]

Murag og unggoy sa Cebu Zoo.

[madrid]

hala basin mao nako akong. great200x grandfather

[handsoff241]

It's to odd to be a human, if it is the missing link, how come the presence of the tail persist?