Posted on 07/21/2009 8:37:13 PM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
On May 19 the world met a most unlikely celebrity: the fossilized carcass of a housecat-size primate that lived 47 million years ago in a rain forest in what is now Germany. The specimen, a juvenile female, represents a genus and species new to science, Darwinius masillae, although the media-savvy researchers who unveiled her were quick to give her a user-friendly nickname, Ida. And in an elaborate public-relations campaign, in which the release of a Web site, a book and a documentary on the History Channel were timed to coincide with the publication of the scientific paper describing her in PLoS ONE, Ida’s significance was described in no uncertain terms as the missing link between us humans and our primate kin. In news reports, team members called her “the eighth wonder of the world,” “the Holy Grail,” and “a Rosetta Stone.”
If the detractors are right, Ida is irrelevant to the question of anthropoid—and thus, human—origins.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
For a living thing that died in a prehistoric soup, Ida enjoyed a thoroughly modern unveiling. It, or she as it/she was called, was brought before the world's media with the razzmatazz normally reserved for serving presidents or misbehaving film stars.
It is perhaps churlish to complain about the hour and a half of rampant self-publicising that we had to endure before we finally got to meet it/her. After all, we have already been waiting some 47m years.
So there was no doubting the extraordinary power of the moment.
The most sublime image was of Michael Bloomberg standing beside Ida's glass box, his arm around the shoulders of a school girl who was wearing a T-shirt with the TV tie-in logo: "The Link. This changes everything". The main thing Bloomberg was presumably hoping this would change was his prospects of winning an unprecedented third term as New York mayor in upcoming elections.
Almost on a par with Bloomberg was Tora Aasland, minister for higher education in the Norwegian government, who appeared to think Ida was a wonder of Norwegian science as opposed to a wonder of pre-historic evolution. She pledged $350,000 for the project.
Beyond the politicians, the media crowd was in full voice, each individual making more high-pitched claims about the discovery than the last. Anthony Geffen who has made a film about the secret process to bring the fossil to public attention made an allusion to the moon landings.
Nancy Dubuc of the History Channel that will be showing the film said Ida "promised to change everything that we thought we understood about the origins of human life".
The publishers Little Brown plugged their rapidly turned around and secretly produced book-of-the-film-of-the-science by saying the fossil would "undoubtedly revolutionise our understanding of our origins".
Dr Jorn Hurum, the scientist at the heart of the project, made the most exotic parallels. He screened photographs of the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone, without elucidation, though the implication was clear. He variously described the fossil as the Holy Grail of paleontology and the lost ark of archeology.
But this is all fine science in the tradition of Bathybius and Piltdown.
Here's a little something on Missing Links by evolutionist John R. Baker.
piltdown ping
That’s what I was thinking.
They’re too eager to make their assessment about where this fossil fits in the evolutionary scheme of things and too eager to announce it.
Likely, they’ll just end up with egg on their faces, as they have with so many other fossils, like the *Hobbit* fossil.
Healthy debate and self-checking by the science community.
Sounds like science checks and balances are in force and doing their job.
There really isn’t such a thing as an “Evolutionist.” There are scientists who specialize in TToE and other life sciences. Most scientists (> 99%) understand TToE. The handful who don’t are letting their agenda override their learning and aren’t “scientists” by any meaningful definition of the term.
Have a blessed day!
Thanks for posting the article.
I question these fossil 'finds' as well.
Usually, what I find upon investigation is that when they say they found the fossil of creature 'x', they are usually talking about a piece of jawbone, or a tooth, or a hipbone. From that they 'reconstruct' the whole creature.
So, I wonder how much of the 'fossil' there is, in this case?
See for yourself.
Looks like they had the skull, jawbone, and at least one limb, possibly the full skeleton. According to the article.
Also, according to the article, this creature may not even be on the same limb as simians and humans.
She was definitely the predecessor of Washingtonius Secretarius!
That’s what stuck out at me as well.
Too eager to classify and too eager to announce.
It makes it look like their desire to find the missing link to establish the ToE beyond the shadow of a doubt, is clouding their judgment.
When they nicknamed it "Ida" Darwinius, I wonder if they had in mind Ida Darwin, the eugenist. She was a promoter of segregation of the eugenically unfit. There was an "Ida Darwin" institute where the so-called feeble-minded were locked up, and so on.
A pattern of behavior going back to Piltdown and Bathybius. And even earlier, with, for example, Haeckel announcing and classifying creatures that existed only in his imagination.
...”Critics concur that Ida is an adapiform, but they dispute the alleged ties to anthropoids. Robert Martin of the Field Museum in Chicago charges that some of the traits used to align Ida with the anthropoids do not in fact support such a relationship. Fusion of the lower jaw, for instance, is not present in the earliest unequivocal anthropoids, suggesting that it was not an ancestral feature of this group.
Moreover, the trait has arisen independently in several lineages of mammals—including some lemurs—through convergent evolution. Martin further notes that Ida also lacks a defining feature of the anthropoids: a bony wall at the back of the eye socket.
“I am utterly convinced that Darwinius has nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of higher primates,” he declares.
They got their 15 minutes of fame...before being shot down.
Thank you.
It is the WHOLE skeleton. What an amazing find.
LOL! Needless to say, Creation and ID scientists had this one pegged RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX!!!
Thanks for the ping!
In another article, the scientist says it is her daughter’s name.
Ok. It’s 95%. Close enough for government work.
Ida has a tail.
So do rats and cats.
Wonder if Ida was somebody’s lost pet?
Poor thing, lost in the rain-forest.
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