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Darwinism's Rosetta stone

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  • Darwinism's Rosetta stone


    Fossil Ida: she's 47m years old – and she's our link to animal life

    Sir David Attenborough
    guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 May 2009 23.40 BST


    Another milestone in our *evolutionary history was reached *yesterday when the exquisitely preserved fossil of a 47-*million-year-old *primate was *unveiled. Here *Britain's pre-eminent natural history broadcaster describes the importance of being Ida

    Humanity is very egocentric. We are *fascinated with ourselves. I'm not sure that it is a particularly nice *characteristic, but we are.

    When we look around us at the natural world, there is often an ulterior motive. We desperately want to know where we came from. We love to think about us and about our ancestors.

    Yesterday was humanity's first chance to come face to face with one such ancestor – and a remarkable ancient relative at that. Ida is one of the most immaculately preserved primate fossils ever found and, at 47 million years old, she comes from a key moment in our evolutionary history.

    This beautiful little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of the mammals: with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters. According to one of the scientists who has studied her, she is a "Rosetta stone" for *understanding our early evolution.

    One reason Ida is so special is her exquisite preservation, and that is because the Messel pit, near Darmstadt in Germany, is a very exceptional place. Forty-seven million years ago it was a volcanic lake surrounded by a steamy sub-tropical forest. Because of the unique conditions there, Messel – which is now designated a Unesco world heritage site – has yielded countless fabulous fossils including bats, pygmy horses, crocodiles and even insects with the colours on their wings still visible.

    People who study fossils are nearly always studying the hard parts: the shells and the bones. They have to deduce from the shape of each bone what the muscles were like. From that they can deduce more about how the animal held itself and moved. If they are lucky they can maybe make suggestions about what the internal organs were like.

    With this fossil you don't have to make suggestions. Almost uniquely, we not only have the bones, but we also have the fur and the flesh. So it is not a question of deduction, it is not a question of imagination or suggestions, it is fact.

    Right before our eyes is exquisite detail of what the little primate looked like. There is the stomach, and inside is her last meal – a final vegetarian snack. There are very few fossils for which you can say that. After the demise of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago, suddenly the domination of the Earth was up for grabs. What succeeded them, of course, were the mammals, creatures like ourselves with warm bodies and with hair. But which one of those was going to lead to us?

    The more you look at Ida the more you can picture, as it were, the primate in embryo. She represents the seed from which the diversity of monkeys, apes and ultimately every person on the planet came.

    She lived long before our primate line had split into the species we know today – the spider monkeys, baboons and gorillas to name but a few. And crucially, she lived at around the time that a separate primate line, the one containing the lemurs and less well-known groups such as the lorises and bush babies, split off from the rest. She is a glimpse into the melting pot of early primate evolution.

    Is Ida the missing link? Well, yes and no. Lines of ancestry are extremely difficult to work out from a series of fossils and there are still huge gaps in our understanding of the primate evolutionary story. But the physical proof of evolution has always demanded that there should be links or transitional forms. The famous Archaeopteryx – the first specimen of which resides in the Natural History Museum in London – for example, is one such transitional fossil between the reptiles and birds. Those who doubt that very simple generalised mammals gave rise to the primates could always ask, "show us the link". Well that link is no longer missing.

    Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist who acquired the fossil for science and assembled a world-class team to study it, deserves great credit. He had the insight and the instinct to see this thing and to know in his heart immediately that this was going to be of profound importance. It was certainly an act of scholarship and of scientific insight.

    But to a certain degree, it was also an act of faith. He might have spent years, and quite a lot of money, on something that was going to prove to be a dead end. His gamble has paid off spectacularly.

    To anybody who's interested in *evolution, and the ultimate demonstration of the truth of evolution – the fact of evolution – this is a key discovery. And it is fitting that Hurum's team have chosen, in Darwin's 200th birthday year, to name the fossil after the father of natural selection. Ida's scientific name is Darwinius masillae.

    Darwin was very sensitive about the implications of his explanation of evolution, and in particular how human beings fitted into the picture. It was a nettle that had to be grasped, but it would offend quite a lot of people he knew, his wife a devoted Christian, for one. Darwin could almost get away with explanations of evolution in other parts of the animal world. But the notion that we were connected to other animals, was one that was deeply upsetting to a lot of religious people.

    It is really delightful that 150 years after Darwin first tentatively put forward the proposition that human beings were part of the rest of animal life, here at last we have the link which connects us. Ida is a link between the apes, monkeys and us with the rest of the mammals and ultimately the whole animal kingdom. I think Darwin would have been thrilled.
    In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

    Leibniz

  • #2



    Scientists have discovered an exquisitely preserved ancient primate fossil that they believe forms a crucial "missing link" between our own evolutionary branch of life and the rest of the animal kingdom.

    The 47m-year-old primate – named Ida – has been hailed as the fossil equivalent of a "Rosetta Stone" for understanding the critical early stages of primate evolution.

    The top-level international research team, who have studied her in secret for the past two years, believe she is the most complete and best preserved primate fossil ever uncovered. The skeleton is 95% complete and thanks to the unique location where she died, it is possible to see individual hairs covering her body and even the make-up of her final meal – a last vegetarian snack.

    "This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all the mammals; with cows and sheep, and elephants and anteaters," said Sir David Attenborough who is narrating a BBC documentary on the find. "The more you look at Ida, the more you can see, as it were, the primate in embryo."

    "This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years," said Dr Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. "It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far. It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study." The fossil has been formally named Darwinius masillae in honour of Darwin's 200th birthday year.

    It has been shipped across the Atlantic for an unveiling ceremony hosted by the mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg today. There is even talk of Ida being the first non-living thing to feature on the front cover of People magazine.

    She will then be transported back to Oslo, via a brief stop at the Natural History Museum in London on Tuesday, 26 May, when Attenborough will host a press conference.

    Ida was originally discovered by an amateur fossil hunter in the summer of 1983 at Messel pit, a world renowned fossil site near Darmstadt in Germany. He kept it under wraps for over 20 years before deciding to sell it via a German fossil dealer called Thomas Perner. It was Perner who approached Hurum two years ago.

    "My heart started beating extremely fast," said Hurum, "I knew that the dealer had a world sensation in his hands. I could not sleep for 2 nights. I was just thinking about how to get this to an official museum so that it could be described and published for science." Hurum would not reveal what the university museum paid for the fossil, but the original asking price was $1m. He did not see the fossil before buying it – just three photographs, representing a huge gamble.

    But it appears to have paid off. "You need an icon or two in a museum to drag people in," said Hurum, "this is our Mona Lisa and it will be our Mona Lisa for the next 100 years."

    Hurum chose Ida's nickname because the diminutive creature is at the equivalent stage of development as his six-year-old daughter. Hurum said Ida is very excited about her namesake. "She says, 'there are two Idas now, there's me I'm living and then there's the dead one.'"

    "It's caught at a really very interesting moment [in the animal's life] when it fortunately has all its baby teeth and is in the process of forming all its permanent teeth," said Dr Holly Smith, an expert in primate development at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was part of the team. "So you have more information in it than almost any fossil you could think of."

    The fossil's amazing preservation means that the scientific team has managed to glean a huge amount of information from it, although this required new X-ray techniques that had not previously been applied to any other specimens.

    The researchers believe it comes from the time when the primate lineage, that diversified into monkeys, apes and ultimately humans, split from a separate group that went on to become lemurs and other less well known species.

    Crucially though, Ida is not on the lemur line because she lacks two key characteristics shared by lemurs – a grooming claw on her second toe and a fused set of teeth called a tooth comb. Also, a bone in her ankle called the talus is shaped like members of our branch of the primates. So the researchers believe she may be on our evolutionary line dating from just after the split with the lemurs.

    According to the team's published description of the skeleton in the journal PLoS ONE, Ida was 53cm long and a juvenile around six to nine months old. The team can be sure Ida is a girl because she does not have a penis bone.

    "She was at this vulnerable age where you are no longer right with your mother," said Smith, "Just as you leave weaning you are not full grown, but you are on your own."

    The unprecedented preservation of Ida meant working out how she died was more like a modern day crime scene investigation than the informed guess-work that palaeontologists usually make do with. The team noticed that she had a broken wrist that had begun to partially heal. The injury did not kill her, but they speculate that it contributed to her premature demise.

    "It might be that her mother dropped her once or that she fell down from a tree earlier in her life," Smith said. She survived the accident, but her climbing abilities would have been impaired. Unable to drink from water trapped by tree leaves, she would have had to venture down to the lake to drink. This would have proved to be a fateful decision.

    The huge range of magnificently preserved fossils at Messel suggest that the volcanic lake was a death trap. Scientists believe that it sporadically let forth giant belches of poisonous volcanic gases that would have immediately suffocated anything in, around and even over the water. Ida would then have fallen into the water and been preserved in the sediment deep at the bottom.

    • Atlantic productions' programme, Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link, will be broadcast in the UK on Tuesday, 26 May at 9pm on BBC1. Colin Tudge's book, The Link, is published on 20 May by Little Brown.

    Source
    In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

    Leibniz

    Comment


    • #3
      The opposible toes on its hind legs indicate more of a tree climbing monkey than a land locked cat or dog. The very long tail with its strong vertabrae also indicate it was pre-hensile (strong enough to hang its own weight by the tail).
      Able to leap tall tales in a single groan.

      Comment


      • #4
        Yet another transitional fossil for creationists to ignore.
        sigpic

        Comment


        • #5
          And the arguments rage on


          Reuters Tom Heneghan and Julie Mollins



          Even 150 years after it first appeared in print, Charles Darwin's "On The Origin of Species" still fuels clashes between scientists convinced of its truth and critics who reject its view of life without a creator.

          This "Darwin Year" -- so named because February 12 was the 200th anniversary of the British naturalist's birth and November 24 the 150th anniversary of his book -- has seen a flood of books, articles and conferences debating his theory of evolution.

          While many covered well-trodden ground, some have taken new paths. But no consensus is in sight, probably because Darwinian evolution is both a powerful scientific theory describing how life forms develop through natural selection and a basis for philosophies and social views that often include atheism.

          "People are encountering and rejecting evolution not so much as a science but as a philosophy," Nick Spencer, director of studies at the public theology think-tank Theos in London, told Reuters.

          "Today's most eloquent Darwinians often associate evolution with atheism ... amorality (and) the idea there is no design or purpose in the universe."

          He said many people had embraced anti-evolution views in the United States and Britain in recent decades "not so much because they are rejecting evolution as a science, although that is often how that sentiment is articulated, but because they're rejecting it as a philosophy about life."

          "It's quite possible to be an evolutionist and not to hold that philosophy about life, to be an evolutionist and still believe in God and purpose and design," he said.

          MUSLIM DOUBTS ABOUT DARWIN

          Creationism, the idea God made the world as described in the Bible, and the "intelligent design" view positing an unnamed creator are usually linked to conservative U.S. Protestant groups in the United States.

          A conference last week in Alexandria, Egypt, focussed on how widespread anti-evolution views also are in the Muslim world, where believers cite the Koran's account of creation -- somewhat similar to the Bible's -- to reject Darwinism as atheist.

          Nidhal Guessoum, an Algerian astrophysicist at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, said 62 percent of the Muslim students and professors on his campus said in a recent survey that evolution was "just an unproven theory."

          Only 10 percent of non-Muslim professors agreed. He also cited a poll saying 80 percent of Pakistani students doubted evolution and many teachers misunderstood the scientific theory.

          "It will take a long, sustained effort, and a compassionate approach" to convince such Muslims that evolution need not negate faith, he said. "'More biology' does not improve the situation much (and) 'more science' does not work."

          EVOLUTION BEYOND DARWIN

          In Paris on Monday, a conference at UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) heard several scientists who accept evolution argue Darwin could not explain underlying order and patterns found in nature.

          "We have to differentiate between evolution and Darwinism," said French philosopher of science Jean Staune, author of the new book "Au-dela de Darwin" (Beyond Darwin). "Of course there is adaptation. But like physics and chemistry, biology is also subject to its own laws."

          Michael Denton, a geneticist with New Zealand's University of Otago, said Darwinian "functionalists" believed life forms adapted to the outside world while his "structuralist" view also saw an internal logic driving this evolution down certain paths.

          His view, which he called "extraordinarily foreign to modern biology," explained why many animals developed eyes like human ones and why proteins, one of the building blocks of life, fold into structures unchanged for three billion years.

          Denton said he was a religious agnostic seeking answers to unresolved scientific questions.

          "Our knowledge of biology is actually very limited," he said. "I have no axe to grind -- I'll leave it to science to find this out.

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