f13.net

It's 95% complete as a skeleton, about 50 cm in length. Complete with structural features reminiscent of humans. (http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Missing-Link-Scientists-In-New-York-Unveil-Fossil-Of-Lemur-Monkey-Hailed-As-Mans-Earliest-Ancestor/Article/200905315284582?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15284582_Missing_Link%3A_Scientists_In_New_York_Unveil_Fossil_Of_Lemur_Monkey_Hailed_As_Mans_Earliest_Ancestor)

Not sure if this post belongs in Serious Business or Politics. Guess the comments from here on in will decide that.

We should have a "Science: It works, bitches!" subforum.

 :oh_i_see:

By which I mean to say, I somehow doubt this is going to be the final piece of evidence needed to convince any fence-sitters.

47 million years old?  But that's impossible!  It can't be much more than 2000 years old...

<ducks and runs>

That's really cool.  I hope some more good discoveries come out of it.

I wish they would stop trying to downplay this discovery.  It might literally hit Paleontology so hard that it vaporizes, leaving a smoking crater in the side of Science.

I'm surprised this isn't getting more coverage - arguably one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century, and it is getting fewer column inches than a car crash.

I'm not surprised.  Average people don't give a shit about this.  I'm not sure they understand it's like a meteor.

The article says the fossil's going to be on display at the Natural History Museum in London later this month. Awesome!

This news pales in comparison to all things American Idol.

There is no dead or missing white girl. Non news.

Ok, knew it was out there:

http://www.ultimatedisney.com/dinosaur.html (http://www.ultimatedisney.com/dinosaur.html)

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/dinosaur25.jpg)

They might care if Bruce Willis was sent to blow it up.

It's a cool fossil.

It really pulls the origin of species together.

Although I'm sure it's a very impressive monkey, the website does a piss-poor job of explaining its significance to a layman like myself.  I see the similarities, but aren't there already primates around that we're even more similar to, like chimps?

Ya, im not really sure where that fossil fits in. Ive seen several varying genealogies for primates, how exactly do they place that fossil in the time line? Is it limited to just physiology?  That is supposed to be the oldest shared ancestor between humans and other primates?

From looking at the main media site (http://www.revealingthelink.com/) it looks like Ida is either the/a common ancestor to the anthropoids (monkeys, apes, humans) and prosimians (lemurs, lorises, tarsiers) or the earliest known anthropoid (the info the site is contradictory).

That is an extremely misleading and bombastic article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8058154.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8058154.stm)


Or if you want more detail.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723#pone-0005723-g001 (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723#pone-0005723-g001)

So it's not a missing link between humans and monkeys.  It's a missing link between monkeys and other monkeys.  That is less exciting.

We already know that link (or at least something in that proximity):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegyptopithecus

"Well you see, a day for God is different than a day for us mortals.... heh, I bet you don't know how long a minute for god actually is."


-more or less how a conversation went with (I shit you not) a creationist geologist I once worked with

There is no missing link between humans and monkeys, because we didn't evolve from monkeys; we all evolved from a common ancestor...which I think you knew already. Or am I misunderstanding?


Crap, people need to stop saying "link." It makes me think sequentially.

So what were his thoughts on petroleum?

You're spot-on.  We've all got the Darwin ape to man image stuck in our heads.  It really needs to be thrown out, because it's entirely misleading.  There are hundreds of species that simply died out and didn't evolve further because of various reasons (poor evolution, competition, overspecialization... etc.).  The likelihood of us finding the exact lineage of our evolutionary ancestry is near impossible.

There are many transitional fossils related to humans. The entire concept of a single link is inaccurate. Original article is bombastic bullshit. The history of that fossil is far more interesting than the original story, the history is in the second link.


Edit: What Hawkbit said, i did not fully read the thread before responding.

@ K9, why did you hold back?

As hawkbit says, you're spot on, the notion that we evolved from monkeys is a deliberate misinterpretation spread by opponents of the theory of evolution. Early homonids emerged from a common ancestor with the chimpanzees and the gorillas around 6 million years ago (although estimates of the most recent common ancestor do have quite a large margin of error); however the notion that there was a single binary split and presto! we had humans and chimps is a gross oversimplification. During the species divergence there would have been an extended fuzzy period when there would have been a range of organisms intermediate between the extremes of the diverging lineages (chimp, human and gorilla since there is some good evidence for overlap in the periods of divergance of the three ultimate species). There would also have been other sub-lineages which didn't survive and were either absorbed into one of the main lineages or died out completely. The actual pre-homonid diverged from the pre-orangutang prior to this, and the pre-species for that organism diverged from the pre-gibbon lineage prior to this. During all these periods of speciation and divergence there would have been other lineages that didn't make it.

So essentially the true fossil record is a lot messier than the nice-clean family trees you see knocking around. Any fossils of early primates or early mammals are interesting, but to specifically label one as "the missing link" is realistically impossible. In fact as you observe, the whole notion of a missing link is misleading, since it implies a discrete chain of evolution, which is likely not the case.

Some of what you just said is complete news to me - which is at least partly because I'm just not that interested in the topic.  But you've illustrated an important point.  I guarantee you that the vast majority of people do not know this, and as a result...when they see a discovery like this come out and being described as "missing link found!", it looks pretty ridiculous.  Nobody seems to be capable of explaining this very well, which only gives fuel to the creationists.  When the science doesn't even appear to make sense, what good is it?

So all that said, and in all seriousness, just WHY is this fossil such an interesting find?  If there are no ture links, as you say, then it's just yet another in a large collection of fossils in the collage?

from what I understand it's important for several reasons.

• It's a very complete fossil that even preserves the soft tissues which is unusual and gives a lot of additional information to the research teams.
• It's quite rare, early primates are not found often and even less often in such a complete state
• It's an interstitial fossil showing a clear line forwards and backwards down the evolutionary timeline. There aren't true 'missing links' as Hawkbit correctly points out but there are datapoints that intersect the line very neatly, this is one of those.
• Creatures like this are predicted by the theory of macro evolution, when fossils are found that match these predictions it makes the theory significantly stronger.

Translate "missing link" as "possible common ancestor" and then look at this diagram which I hacked up from something I found on the Interweb:

(http://randjunk.com/images/primate_tree.jpg)

We've found primate fossils along some of the other "prebranch" points going to the right (Aegyptopithecus, mentioned above, being one of them). Those species may or may not be our exact ancestor species but they are considered "representative" examples. Ida, I'm assuming, is the first primate we've found that's very close to the prosimian/anthropoid ("Simians" in the above diagram) branch point, hence the claim of being a "missing link".

That's an awesome diagram, makes it much easier to visualise, thanks.

I don't know the validity of this critique but it seems to mesh well with both of the other links. Even their own research paper (not sure if my link is a peer reviewed journal or not) strongly implies it.

http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/05/poor_poor_ida_or_overselling_a.php (http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/05/poor_poor_ida_or_overselling_a.php)

Interesting critique.

http://www.revealingthelink.com/

It's a beautiful fossil, and it really smells of H.R. Giger. Nuff said.

Macro-evolution is hard to describe for several reasons. Firstly the scales are huge, and the changes are tiny. Secondly, you need to be able to visualise species not as discrete points, but as fuzzy entities. Thirdly you need to accept that speciation and evolution are continuous, rather than discrete processes. The second and third points are hard to describe, particularly visually, as you get incredibly messy images. Phylogenetic trees (like the one Trippy posted) are a potent for describing broad lineages, but they do make the implication that species divergance is a sudden event, rather than a gradual (although in reality the rate at which species have diverged in the past is highly variable). They also only make an inference about a single evolutionary path. This is a fairly robust approximation under the assumptions of the coalescent theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalescent_theory) however it does not permit or make any assumptions about the reverse of the process. As such, any lineages which became extinct are challenging to place on trees when genetic sequence data is available, and impossible without. Consider that the half-life of DNA is ~4.5 million years and you can see that the majority of extinct lineages cannot be accurately placed relative to one-another. Hence while we can place Ida as a point on the inferred tree, we cannot explicitly say that descendants of Ida went on to form modern primates, or whether primates and Ida shared a common ancestor. On the flip side, Ida does establish that there were primitive primate-like mammals around at a time when the pre-species of the primate lineages were also existing on the earth. The quality of the fossil (it has fur, and remnants of ingested food) make it a remarkable snapshot into the world 46 million years ago. Ida is an important piece of the puzzle, and one which adds ever more weight to the theory of evolution. However due to the decay of DNA, and the incomplete nature of the fossil record (little more than a tiny percentage of all morphologically distinct species will ever be represented in the record) we will never have a complete picture.

As to your second point; while science should strive to be understandable by the lay individual, it is inherently complex, and so some things are going to naturally take longer to be univerally accepted. Just because it isn't immediately clear to an individual (no offense to you) does not mean it doesn't have worth. Admittedly, evolutionary science is more of an ivory-tower exercise than other branches of science, but it does make sense given a certain level of understanding and its worth would seem inherent, given humanity's incessant desire to understand our origins.

See, I get that, and that makes it not terribly exciting.  We've got fossilized protozoa and bacteria that are probably common ancestors between us and whole lots of other shit. 

Distant common ancestors are not exciting.  Closer common ancestors would be, but this is not it.  The most significant thing about this fossil appears to be that it's well-preserved, which is definitely something, but it's not a "missing link" as the term is usually used (i.e. a closest common ancestor between us and our closest living relative, the chimp).


Edit to add:


 :uhrr:  You know perfectly well what I meant.  I just couldn't be arsed to go to Wikipedia and find out what the correct name is for extinct things-that-aren't-quite-monkeys-(but-look-very-much-like-them)-that-we-evolved-from.

This is where laypeople and biologists will clash: in evolutionary time, this is VERY close. Way, way closer than when we climbed out of the ooze. It completes a cladogram that has had to rely on assumptions since the birth of evolutionary biology and modern anthropology. This is why this is such a big deal.

Let me clear it up for you:

In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its mutant fish hands, and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a monkey-fish-frog. And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey... and that made you! So there you go! You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!

Found this  :ye_gods: (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/photogalleries/zombie-ants/index.html) while reading the national geopraphic article on our missing link.

If you enjoyed the zombie ant, why don't you try the Sacculina! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacculina)  :drill:

That all says to me that you're talking out of your ass and have no idea how this works. My bible's pretty clear that God made man and these money things were probably just from the early days of the creation, I'd guess around 9am on the Friday. :awesome_for_real:

On a more serious note, I've never really understood the fascination with finding a common ancestor. I kind of get the narcissistic element, humans are cool and all and in many other areas of thought and research I'm all for learning about us but I've never really gotten it in evolutionary stuff. The whole Cambrian explosion is far more interesting, not only do we get a fuck load of cool crawly things but the level of sudden and radical genetic development is fascinating. I'll admit I really don't understand the science behind it, kind of wish I did but in terms of evolutionary genetics I always thought that would be a far more interesting period. Although partly that's because I really don't evolution has to prove itself by finding some sort of common ancestor for humans anymore. Hell why does it have to be some common ancestor for us anyway? Won't a common ancestor between elephants and rhinos (or whales or whatever) do just as well if that's what you're trying to prove?

I had always assumed it was to have something to beat over the heads of Creationists, but recent charts and graphs suggest otherwise.  Now I'm going with K9's ivory-tower assertion.

But the way this is going to play out is "WTF?  That silly looking monkey thing is THE missing link?  LOL Evolution!".  I don't see it changing anyone's mind, because nobody's playing that close attention...also because nobody is doing a good job explaining it.

This.  I think the original article just way oversells it.  Which is a shame because it is a very nice monkey thing.

Trying to persuade Creationists with scientific fact is always going to be a losing proposition. They aren't interested in what science has to say even if the fossil record was complete and unambiguous. When you're dealing with people who absolutely believe that a breeding pair of every animal on the planet lived within walking distance of Noah's gaff, appeals to reason that contradict a literal interpretation of the Bible are going to fall on very stony ground.

Actually I didn't. That's why I asked if I was misunderstanding you. ;) If you want something more to get excited about here, consider this is a lemur...with HUMAN HANDS!!! Now that's f'ing creepy.

What amazes me most about the creation/evolution debate is it's never going to die. EVER. This is something that was old THOUSANDS of years ago, and we're still debating it.

whales and hippos

I also had a professor in undergrad who taught a petroleum geology class, who happened to be deeply christian... as in when we were in the field, along with his rock hammer would be a bible.  The short answer is, I never had the balls to ask him how he explained away things like fossils.

As for my co-worker again it came down to "time for God is not the same as it is for us".  So... 7 days to create the world could mean anything if God's time is so different.  To me it was a scab that was tempting to pick at, but given that we worked in the field a lot I just didn't feel like pissing them off by ranting at them.

Apparently somewhere there is a creationist museum which has all these issues explained away with some very convoluted pseudoscience.

Yup (http://creationmuseum.org/)


See also Dr David Menton (http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/d_menton.asp)

It's also possible to be deeply religious, think the Bible is a great resource for teaching us how to live/getting to know God and not think it's a fucking literal history that is inerrant. See pretty much any decent university's theology department. Of course I don't know if this applies to your professor, he might have just been a bit of a wackjob.

It paleos in comparison.

Incidentally, a piece of research that is far closer to being a "missing link" in the macro-evolutionary theory was published in Science back in February LINK (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5918/1229)

An RNA enzyme that catalyzes the RNA-templated joining of RNA was converted to a format whereby two enzymes catalyze each other's synthesis from a total of four oligonucleotide substrates. These cross-replicating RNA enzymes undergo self-sustained exponential amplification in the absence of proteins or other biological materials. Amplification occurs with a doubling time of about 1 hour and can be continued indefinitely. Populations of various cross-replicating enzymes were constructed and allowed to compete for a common pool of substrates, during which recombinant replicators arose and grew to dominate the population. These replicating RNA enzymes can serve as an experimental model of a genetic system. Many such model systems could be constructed, allowing different selective outcomes to be related to the underlying properties of the genetic system.

Essentially this goes some way to proving some of the assumptions of the RNA world hypothesis, which is (from my point of view) considerably more tenuous and far less supported than the morphological and phylogenetic arguments surrounding the larger animalia, which are really a flash in the pan from an evolutionary perspective.

And here's a parasite (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11516-parasite-hijacks-brains-with-surgical-precision.html) who convinces mice and rats that they LOVE the smell of cat urine!

Suddenly Dead Rising doesn't seem so far-fetched.

One of my favorite people is a Presbyterian minister.  She makes me look moderate.  This very much describes her and she has introduced me to several like-minded individuals.  Also she doesn't care I'm a heathen unbeliever, only that I try to make others' lives better.

When i saw a five second news report about it I immediatly thought it was something along the lines of this (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1583517/Flying-penguins-found-by-BBC-programme.html), however after looking it up on the internet I was surprised it was actually true.

It made me wonder what TV actually sees as interesting news, aliens could land on earth and it'd be a 5 second segment, followed by half an hour of how an athlete/politician/kitten did drugs/sleeping/sex with trees/heroin/teapots.

Depends on what those aliens were up to.  If they came to share knowledge in a peaceful fashion, then no, it's not newsworthy.  If they're breaking into elderly people's houses or stealing cars, then it'll be all over the 11 o'clock news for weeks.

I bet those aliens wear wifebeaters.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124274731478535053.html


I love that line. Its so simple, yet totally descriptive.

I love how scientists explain things to lay people by just sort of making shit up. I know it's probably as close to making sense as it's possible to get for some people but :uhrr:

Scientists are often in a bit of a bind when it comes to explaining things to the media. If they give a detailed and accurate outline they'll get misquoted or ignored. If they give a simplistic analogy they'll end up being inaccurate. And the media will still probably misquote them.

The best solution is to go for inaccurate-but-published, perhaps by comparing your find to a meteor.  Especially if you managed to convince your government to shell out $1.000.000 for a nice fossil.

People don't accept "trust me, it's <blah>".  They want it put into terms they can understand even if it's faulty.

Trust me, I've tried.

:awesome_for_real:

This seems a bit beyond "dumbing it down for the peasants" read some of the quotes attributed to these guys. It was sensationalized intentionally.

No, the best solution is to go for accurate-and-published, ie. the peer-reviewed journal where the discovery was first published. Most reputable media sources have science consultants to interpret news like this.

"The Science of Discworld"* calls these sort of things 'Lies-to-children' in that there's a whole bunch of stuff that we're taught throughout our education which basically goes "Well, we told you this last year because that's all you were ready to understand, but this is actually what we meant". And then the next year we're told "Well yes, we told you that last year but now you're ready for the next bit of information". And so on.

There's also 'Lies to Managers' and so on - it all basically boils down to "This isn't 100% true, but it's close enough that you'll actually understand it while looking sort of similar to what's really going on"

*Actually a pretty decent "Science for dummies" series, believe it or not.

The technical term is "Executive Summary."

This is no way to appease the government people who gave you the money to buy a fossil.  After all, it's just a probable common ancestor of the simians and prosimians.  The peer-reviewed journal is separate and has little to do with trying to get on bbc.co.uk or making your purchase seem like a good use of kroner.

EDIT: kroner

Well regardless, it'll be another five years before the Discovery Channel has sufficiently dumbed it down for the interested masses.

Also that long to have found enough padding to make it a one-hour show.

http://www.history.com/content/the-link (http://www.history.com/content/the-link)




Airs on the 25th.

I was thinking he should. The fossil looks like an Alien from the Aliens movies.

Maybe you mean Bill Paxton?

When ancestral fossils ATTACK!

http://www.history.com/content/the-link (http://www.history.com/content/the-link)

This show was 2 hours of the most padded, drawn-out and overhyped nonsense I've seen on History in a while.  Could have easily been an hour special.

Two hours?  Jesus, to say "yo, here's something what was related to monkeys and lemurs".  There is more information in two hours of BSG filler episodes.

Yeah, just the first 40 minutes or so that I saw was full of a lot of "DUN DUN DUNNNNN!" music, overwrought narration and science geeks jizzing over the prospects. I mean, it's a cool discovery, but I kept expecting them to bring on the experts who showed how Nostradamus had predicted the discovery of Ida would cause the Mayan calendar to infect us all with the zombie pox.

I can't wait for The Onion Channel!