Evolution (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, May 21, 2009, 09:08 (5461 days ago) @ David Turell

I've been away for a few days, and came back to find sensational headlines in Wednesday's Guardian: "She's called Ida, she's 47m years old ... and she's our link to animal life". She is dubbed "the eighth wonder of the world", some scientists are calling her the "missing link", and regard her as the final proof that Darwin was right. - David Attenborough wrote the front page article, which you can find on - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/19/ida-fossil-attenborough-evolution-darwin - However, that's only one of several articles in the same issue. In a considerably less prominent piece, there is a quote from a paper written by Jorn Hurum, the leader of the team studying the fossil at Oslo University: "Darwinius masillae is important in being exceptionally well-preserved and providing a much more complete understanding of the paleobiology of an Eocene primate than was available in the past...[the species] could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved, but we are not advocating this here." The article concludes: "The paper's scientific reviewers asked that they tone down their original claims that the fossil was on the human evolutionary line." - I'm left wondering just how wonderful this wonder is...Any enlightening comments would be much appreciated.