"Ida"-- The Latest "Missing Link"

I love watching the History Channel. There are some great shows, and there are some real stinkers. Such is the case with the upcoming, "The Link". Yesterday I saw a commercial for an upcoming special program detailing the story of "Ida", the lemur-like fossil that has now been declared--the missing link. It is claimed that she had an opposable right thumb. The fossil was found about 30 kilometers south of Frankfurt, Germany, and is said to have been dated at around 47 million years old. (Carbon dating *cough*)

Apparently a group of scientists have been keeping the discovery of this fossil a closely guarded secret for some two years now. I guess they didn't want anyone else messing with their discovery, or making any kind of speculation about their conclusions. A "dream-team" of scientists have been doing the honors. Professor Phillip Gingerich has already declared, "Well, it's kind of Rosetta Stone, because it ties together parts we haven't been able to associate before." They are billing it as the oldest and most complete fossil of a human ancestor.

Sir David Attenborough, the British narrator of "Nature" is just glowing about the find. He said, "This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals. This is the one that connects us directly with them.....Now people can say, 'OK, we are primates, show us the link,'" The link they would have said up to now is missing – well, it's no longer missing."

There are though, already detractors within the evolutionary ranks, and I think that some of them are more than a bit blind-sided by the media circus that is happening all around this little fossil. Even Chris Baird, the curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburg, PA said, "I would be absolutely dumbfounded if it turns out to be a potential ancestor to humans." I guess he needn't worry about that.

There have been a ton of fossil discoveries over the years that have been declared to be the all-important missing link that shows a direct evolutionary relationship between present-day man and this or that animal. Most of them have been proven to be the product of hucksterism, and the rest have been shown over time to be just----well.....bad science.

I have no idea whether this fossil will be shown to be a fabrication or not, but it doesn't really matter. What is going on here is pure hype. Don't be fooled. All of the hoopla surrounding it is going to reverberate around rooms across the country for a while, and then it is going to be seen for what it is--just another fossil that some men and women jumped to some conclusions about.

Some within the school of evolutionary thought have asked people to settle down and back off from the sensationalistic claims that "Ida" is a link in the human/evolutionary line. I can see why they would. They pretty much know that every predecessor to her has already been shot down in flames. Good thinking.