This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters,” said Sir David Attenborough who is narrating a BBC documentary on the find. “The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo.”
“This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years,” said Dr Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. “It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far. It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study.”
(From the Guardian May 19, 2009 James Randerson)
And this:
“Of particular importance to phylogenetic studies, the absence of a toilet claw and a toothcomb demonstrates that Darwinius masillae is not simply a fossil lemur, but part of a larger group of primates, Adapoidea, representative of the early haplorhine diversification.”
Jens L. Franzen1,2, Philip D. Gingerich3, Jörg Habersetzer1, Jørn H. Hurum4*, Wighart von Koenigswald5, B. Holly Smith6
(From Plos-one)
“our connection” “our evolution” “haplorhine” (apes, monkeys, tarsiers)
Ida wasn't hailed as a “missing link”? Not proving? Really?
It was represented as a “missing link”, but between lemurs and monkeys - NOT between apes and humans. And I also never saw anyone in those quotes claiming that this was “proof” of anything.
My great great great great great grandfather is not a “missing link” between my grandfather and me and it is a ridiculous lie to suggest so.