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Two new species of lemur have been found in Madagascar, bringing the number of known species to 49. German and Malagasy scientists made the discovery by analysing the genetic make-up of wild lemurs. Lemurs are considered the most endangered of all primates and live only on Madagascar which has evolved in isolation for 165 million years. As a result, the island is now home to mammals, birds and plants that exist nowhere else on our planet. The first new species is a giant mouse lemur known as Mirza zaza. It has a long bushy tail and is about the size...

This foraging occupation of one site effectively doubles and confirms the length of Madagascar’s known occupational history and thus the time during which people exploited its environments. The rock shelter yielded a stratified assemblage with small flakes, microblades, and retouched crescentic and trapezoidal tools, probably projectile elements, made from cherts and obsidian, some brought more that 200 km. The assemblage from the top layers of the site is well dated to 1050–1350 A.D. This was achieved using carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), as well as ceramic typology imported from the Near East and China. Below this layer is...

Around 5,000 years ago, the island of Madagascar would have resembled a Sci-Fi novel. Strange, prickly forests, gorilla-sized lemurs, pygmy hippopotamuses, horned crocodile and elephant birds whose eggs were 180 times the size of what you'd find in your fridge today, all called the African island home -- that was until the humans arrived.

Five-year-old James Trinh was unaware of the headlines when leaving his preschool Thursday in Daly City, about 5 miles from the zoo, and exclaimed, “There’s a lemur! There’s a lemur!” Cynthia Huang, director of the Hope Lutheran Day School, Huang was skeptical at first. “I thought, Are you sure it’s not a raccoon?” she said. The children, parents and teachers watched as caretakers arrived and coaxed the lemur into a transport cage, Huang said. San Francisco Zoo director Tanya Peterson said Maki was “an aging wild animal who needed special care” for ailments including arthritis. “He’s still agitated, dehydrated and...

The beautifully preserved remains of a 47-million-year-old, lemur-like creature have been unveiled in the US. The preservation is so good, it is possible to see the outline of its fur and even traces of its last meal. The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. But some independent experts, awaiting an opportunity to see the new fossil, are sceptical of the claim. And they have been critical of the hype surrounding the presentation of Ida. The fossil was launched amid great fanfare at...

After taking Isaac from the zoo, Kasbar put him in a plastic drawer without ventilation and then abandoned him in front of a hotel in Newport Beach hotel with two notes that said "Lemur (with tracker)" and "This belongs to the Santa Ana Zoo it was taken last night please bring it to police." Isaac was returned unharmed to the zoo, according to the release. Several other animals escaped after their enclosure was opened by Kasbar but they were all recovered, the release said. In addition to his prison sentence, Kasbar was sentenced to pay restitution of $8,486 to the...

Aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) are native to Madagascar. No one knows precisely how many exist in the wild. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies the animals as endangered and estimates that more than half of their wild population has disappeared in the past three decades. As adults, aye-ayes are about the size of possums. They use their spindly fingers to tap on the bark of trees, aiming to spook wood-boring insects inside the tree so that they'll move. When the aye-ayes hear the telltale scuttle of a potential meal, the predators chew holes into the bark and fish...

One of the two lemurs attacked by another primate earlier this week at the Albuquerque zoo died Saturday. The ABQ Bio Park said a 26-year-old siamang named Brian pried open some heavy-duty mesh that was separating its enclosure from the lemurs on Tuesday. Brian climbed in and attacked the two lemurs. "Both received injuries to their tails and also bite wounds that required some suturing," said Debbie Wiese, the zoo’s primate supervisor. ... The BioPark is now keeping the siamangs and lemurs in separate exhibits to avoid any future problems.

New Fossil Hype Fits Old Pattern by Brian Thomas, M.S.* Even evolutionary paleontologists are largely convinced that the media’s recent promotion of a new “missing link” is a monumental overstatement. There is little doubt that the hype surrounding the fossilized lemur “Ida” is primarily bluff and bluster.1 But her media campaign may actually be a more significant story than the fossil itself. Why is the publicity about Ida such a radical mismatch with the data?...

In May 2009, a remarkably well-preserved extinct primate, nicknamed “Ida,” was hailed as one of the most important fossil finds ever. It had features that some interpreted as a link between two primate body forms. At the time, ICR News suggested that its evolutionary significance was far overblown, predicting that the scientific consensus would offer retractions. Those retractions came three months later, confirming that the fossil―called Darwinius―was really just an extinct lemur variety...

By Babu G. Ranganathan …continued. Click here to read Part I The MSM (Main Stream Media) is very good at only reporting the opinions and analysis of those scientists who believe a fossil find supports macro-evolution. The MSM suppresses information and news of scientists who disagree that a particular fossil supports macro-evolution. There are many scientists who don't agree with Darwinian macro-evolution. The Creation Research Society, for example, has a membership of thousands of scientists with a Master's or Ph.D in the natural sciences who all reject Darwinian macro-evolution. Many such scientists have suffered losing grants for research and even...

In the latest act of media hyped pseudo-science, aka liberal/conventional science, the discovery of the crushed and flattened fossil of a lemur monkey, that while alive had a shattered left wrist, is being touted as the needed “proof” of Darwinian theory. For the first time, all scientists interviewed freely admit that the theory of evolution had gaping holes in it. They just claim that all of the answers lie in the packaged, crush fossil that spent the last 20 years hanging on someone’s wall. In other words, they admit that until yesterday, anyone who claimed that there was anything close...