The TV programme about Ida is also available in German:
Missing Link Found
by Satanus 22 Replies latest jw friends
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Fadeout
It's much more likely to be part of a dead end family off the main branch of primate evolution... but hey, if I were the discoverer, I suppose I'd bill it as a "missing link" and get my own TV sepcial too....
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Earnest
As well as a research paper, a documentary and a website there is also a book, The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestors, which has been published regarding this fossil find. This has been reviewed in a UK national newspaper, the Telegraph review of June 6th. The reviewer observes :
I am all for trying to make the dustier corners of science more accessible, but the problem here is that the excitement seems more in the spirit of PT Barnum than Darwin’s Origin of Species. Ida is not “the link” because there is never going to be one missing link between humans and their primate ancestors. In fact, she may belong to a branch that evolved in parallel to the ancestral line of primates that eventually gave rise to humans, one of lots and lots of links in the long and complicated descent of man.
The reader is left in no doubt from the narrative that the “dream team” who studied her is convinced of her importance, from her opposable big toes to her forward-facing eyes. “We’re making history,” declares Hurum. “What we have here is like the Rosetta stone.” But the drive to make Ida a television star, the ensuing secrecy and the pressure of showbiz deadlines have got in the way of old-fashioned work and discussion with the wider scientific community to weigh up her real significance.
What we have here are the claims of a small, wildly enthusiastic group, seasoned with a few caveats that there is bound to be controversy. In effect, it is a celebrity biography of a long-dead primate. Typical of that genre, The Link teasingly promises to reveal all about Ida, along with the honest truth about our ancestry, but it does not convincingly deliver.
I agree.