Debunking Ida

Despite the TV documentary, the publicity blitz and the world-wide excitement that the discovery of Ida, a 47-million-year-old fossil, caused when she was discovered in Germany last May, experts have debunked claims that she provides the “missing link” in the evolution of primates to humans. “In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York. He and his colleagues compared 360 specific anatomical features of 117 living and extinct primate species to draw up a family tree. They report the results in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature,” according the Discovery Channel website.