Darwin, where is your missing link?

June 19, 5:14 PMPhoenix Protestant ExaminerShane Meehan

Ida, a 47 million year old perfectly preserved primate fossil, was unveiled last month after being unearthed 25 years ago in Germany. This fossil has widely been touted as the missing link that ties man to early mammalian life on this planet.  This announcement became such a cultural event that Google even changed their homepage logo for a day to commemorate the finding.

So how exactly is Ida a missing link? Well, this fossil is certainly not supposed to be a link between ape and man, as Lucy is reported to be. Ida is supposed to be the link between lemur and higher primates, who were suspected to share a common ancestor but before now this was only conjecture. If higher primates came from lemurs, and man came from higher primates, there is a more direct link between the heredity of man and ancient mammals.

So what?

After reading up on the discovery of Ida I keep finding myself asking this question. Ida has some distinct physical traits. Ida has opposable thumbs, five fingers and toes with fingernails on each, a short face like a man not elongated like a lemur and forward facing eyes like a man. Ida is given a feminine name and with it a more human-like identity. With all of these striking similarities we can certainly see how Ida is linked to all humankind. But wait a second. There is another animal that has these same features and it’s not a human being. Oh, yeah it’s the modern primate. That’s right. Your regular old world monkey has all of these exact same features. So why are the anthropologists comparing Ida to humans? Could she in fact just be a regular monkey? The fact is that Ida has less connection to human ancestry then the monkey for sale in your local pet store.

And how is this species any different then other fossilized primates that have been found? Well, for one Ida is remarkably well preserved. No doubt history books going forward will all contain pictures of Ida because of the clarity of this specimen. And Ida has been classified as a new species. This is primarily based on differences found in the size of the teeth and the ratio of the limbs to one another. That’s pretty much it. The research itself is a rather unspectacular read. You would expect more based on the claims of this supposedly revolutionary find.

Is this a true transitionary fossil or just another monkey species? If it has the hands of a monkey, the teeth of a monkey and face of a monkey then it is probably just another monkey, albeit a very well preserved and ancient one.