Paleontologist Jorn Hurum lead a team of scientists to analyze a 47-million-year-old fossil above (named "Ida") and came up with this intriguing conclusion: it is a critical missing-link species in the evolution of primates!
Link | Ida's official website - Thanks Marilyn!The fossil, he says, bridges the evolutionary split between higher primates such as monkeys, apes, and humans and their more distant relatives such as lemurs.
"This is the first link to all humans," Hurum, of the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway, said in a statement. Ida represents "the closest thing we can get to a direct ancestor."
Ida, properly known as Darwinius masillae, has a unique anatomy. The lemur-like skeleton features primate-like characteristics, including grasping hands, opposable thumbs, clawless digits with nails, and relatively short limbs.
"This specimen looks like a really early fossil monkey that belongs to the group that includes us," said Brian Richmond, a biological anthropologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study.
OKJ: "The feet! The feet! Mort, what did I tell you about the feet?"
Maurice: "He did tell you about the feet."
That skeleton does look like a small child with a tail, an odd head and feet.
"Evolution satisfies your need for linear thinking."
What need does beleiving in a talking snake, a burning bush, and dead guys comming back to life sate for you? Believe what you will, nobody is forcing you to find this interesting.
See very interesting critique of the whole story at
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/05/poor_poor_ida_or_overselling_a.php
Making mountains out of mole hills is the status quo for so called science these days. The whole of evolutionary thinking is a metaphysical research program. You can only know that this animal is a lemur and died. BUT NO, these researchers in there religious zeal jump to astronomical conclusions and state that this is a missing link with no proof.
What a joke.
The only ones making baseless assumptions here are you guys. You clearly do not understand the difference between what you refer to as "the missing link" and a transitional species.
No one is proposing that this is the "missing link" between apes and humans, that has already been found.
This is what basically amounts to the apes "missing link".
As far as scientists jumping of the deep end and asserting something as fact with no proof to back up their conclusions..... scientists don't do that, they leave that to religion.
From the actual scientific journal report:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
Compaired to?
& the people dismissing evolution really should go back to school.
You can teach at these people all day, but they just won't see the light, 'cos they're fairly convinced they've already seen the light.
As for this fossil, it's a previously unknown species that scientists have given a back story to. Kind of like the tooth they built an elaborate story around having to do with a previously unknown "human" species. Turned out to be a pig's tooth.
"It is commonly claimed by creationists that there are no transitional fossils.[5][3][6] Such claims may be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of what represents a transitional feature[5] but are also explained as a tactic actively employed by creationists seeking to distort or discredit evolutionary theory and has been called the "favourite lie" of creationists.[3]
A common, though fallacious, creationist argument is that no fossils are found with partially functional features.[7] Vestigial organs are common in whales for example.[8] Also, there is evidence that a complex feature with one function can adapt to a wholly different function through evolution in a process known as exaptation. The precursor to, for example, a wing, might originally have only been used for gliding, trapping flying prey, and/or mating display. Nowadays, wings may still have all of these functions, while also being used for active flight.
Although transitional fossils demonstrate the evolutionary transition of one species to another, they only exemplify snapshots of this process. Due to the specialized and rare circumstances required for a biological structure to fossilize, only a very small percentage of all life-forms that ever have existed can be expected to be represented in discoveries. Thus, the transition itself can only be illustrated and corroborated by transitional fossils, but it will never demonstrate an exact half-way point between clearly divergent forms. Creationists have often claimed that this analysis of the fossil record is merely a convenient way to explain the lack of 'snapshot' fossils that show crucial steps between species.[5] Progress in research and new discoveries continue to fill in such gaps, however, and in modern thinking, evolutionary lines of development are understood as being bush-like in appearance, not as the simplistic ladder of progress that was common before Darwin published his theory and still influences popular opinion."
Here's the information you requested.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090211-transitional-fossils.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils
Here's just a couple of links that I expect you to ignore because your thoughts on evolution are the same as my thoughts on an invisible space god... yeah, not very convincing I know.
I think your referring to the Nebraska Man argument with the pigs tooth? The thing about this is that the science community disproved that, and was glad to disprove it. They guy that made the discovery himself said he made the mistake, how many times in the religious community does that happen? Never, they just say everyone else is wrong and start their own church. But then again, I wasn't raised as a child to believe that if I don't believe I am going to suffer, so there’s no skin off my back.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie020.html
I have always lived by the idea that "Science is the study of how God did things". If you can believe that God magically zapped us into existance, why couldn't he simply have used evolution to make us instead?
The Bible only says God created Man. It does not go into details of how he did it.
Wonderful articles from everyone who commeneted
They know more about evolution than all of us put together.
So there is no need to diss them and say they're wrong when you don't know any better.
Here is an analogy; I hold a baby picture of a two-year old. I tell you that one of the kids within a room of thirty 10 year olds is the owner of that picture. I ask you to match the picture with the right child. As you examine everyone in the room you find one child that looks like the child in the picture. You declare that this is the child of that baby picture because they look a like.
I then reveal that the picture is not of any of those kids in that room. You are irritated and say, “They have to be! You said that one of kids in that room was of this picture. They must be related!” Sorry there is no relation. Just because I said so did not make it true and just because they may look a like does not make them related.
What happened? You never questioned my premise that one of these kids is the owner of that picture. You blindly accepted my premise. A good objective investigator would not have.
Evolutionists accept the premise that evolution exists and when they see similarities between a monkey and a human they then postulate that they are related and that one evolved into the other. Sorry there is no relation and just because they may look a like does not make them related that one evolved into the other. Evolution remains unproven.