Early human 'missing link' ancestor unveiled

[Samwise]

Translate "missing link" as "possible common ancestor"

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:

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?

   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.

[voodoolily]

Closer common ancestors would be [exciting], but this is not it. 

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.

[Dtrain]

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!

[ahoythematey]

Found this  while reading the national geopraphic article on our missing link.

[Dtrain]

Found this  while reading the national geopraphic article on our missing link.

If you enjoyed the zombie ant, why don't you try the Sacculina! 

[NowhereMan]

A load of sciency stuff.

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.

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?

[Yegolev]

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.

[Cyrrex]

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[IainC]

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.

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.

[Slyfeind]

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?

   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.

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.

[Lantyssa]

(or whales or whatever)

whales and hippos

[Fraeg]

creationist geologist

So what were his thoughts on petroleum?

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.

[IainC]

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

Yup

Biblical history is the key to understanding dinosaurs.

See also Dr David Menton

[NowhereMan]

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.

[Righ]

This news pales in comparison to all things American Idol.

It paleos in comparison.

[K9]

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

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.

[UnSub]

Found this  while reading the national geopraphic article on our missing link.

If you enjoyed the zombie ant, why don't you try the Sacculina! 

And here's a parasite who convinces mice and rats that they LOVE the smell of cat urine!

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

[Lantyssa]

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.

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.

[Pagz]

When i saw a five second news report about it I immediatly thought it was something along the lines of this, 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.

[Hawkbit]

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.

[Sky]

I bet those aliens wear wifebeaters.

[Sir T]

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

She is "a representative of an ancestor group that gave rise to higher primates," said Jens Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, who helped analyze the fossil. However, he stopped short of calling the animal a direct ancestor of humans. "She's not our great-great-great-grandmother, but our great-great-great-aunt."

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

[NowhereMan]

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

[apocrypha]

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.

[Yegolev]

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.

[Lantyssa]

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

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.

[gryeyes]

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

[voodoolily]

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.

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.

[Simond]

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

"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.

[Merusk]

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"

The technical term is "Executive Summary."

[Yegolev]

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.

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.

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

[voodoolily]

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

[Yegolev]

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

[gryeyes]

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

About The Link

Missing link found! An incredible 95 percent complete fossil of a 47-million-year-old human ancestor has been discovered and, after two years of secret study, an international team of scientists has revealed it to the world.

Airs on the 25th.