VIDEO:SKY NEWS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLbL1OHU9ZM

oops, I meant to post this to:



Fossil find provides 'missing link' in human evolution
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6320891.ece







A missing link in human evolution may have been filled by a remarkable fossil, which could be the common ancestor of all apes and monkeys, including our species.

Darwinius masillae, a small monkey-like creature that lived 47 million years ago, illuminates a critical chapter in the human story when the primate family tree split into two branches, one of which ultimately led to us.

The fossil could even mark the point at which the evolutionary lineage that gave rise to humans, apes and monkeys diverged from the one that produced more distant primate cousins such as lemurs, lorises and bushbabies.

Its anatomical features suggest it lies close to the origin of the human branch and that the creature, or something rather like it, could be an ancient ancestor of humans and their closest animal relatives.

Sir David Attenborough, who will present a BBC documentary on the discovery next Tuesday, said: “This little creature is going to show us our connection with the rest of all mammals. The link they would have said until now is missing… is no longer missing.”

The almost complete skeleton, which lacks only a part of one leg, was unearthed as long ago as 1983, in the Messel Pit near Darmstadt in Germany, but its significance had not been noticed until now because the fossil was split into two parts which were sold to separate collections.

The pieces have now been reunited by a scientific team led by Jørn Hurum, of the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, and the first analysis is published today in the journal Public Library of Science One. As well as the bones, the fossil preserves soft features of the animal and even its last meal: it was a herbivore that had eaten fruit, seeds and leaves before it died.

“This fossil will probably be pictures in all the textbooks for the next 100 years,” Dr Hurum said. “This is the first link to all humans... truly a fossil that links world heritage.

“This fossil is so complete. Everything’s there. It’s unheard of in the primate record at all. You have to get to human burial to see something that’s this complete.”

Jörg Habersetzer, of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, another member of the study team, said: “This fossil rewrites our understanding of the early evolution of primates.”

The ancient remains are those of a young female and the presence of both adult and baby teeth suggest she was about nine months old, about 1m (3ft) long and about 60 per cent grown when she died. She would eventually have grown to about the size of a small monkey or lemur, about 650g – 900g in weight. The fossil’s sex is known from the absence of a bacculum or “penis bone”.

She has been nicknamed Ida after Dr Hurum’s six-year-old daughter, whose adult teeth were erupting at the same time her father was studying the fossil.

The official name of the species honours Charles Darwin, as both the bicentenary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species fall this year. The second part of its name is taken from the Latin for the Messel Pit where it was discovered.

Ida’s importance stems from her anatomical characteristics, which appear to mark her out as a transitional form between two types of primate. Modern primates are divided into two suborders: the strepsirrhines, or “wet-nosed” primates, include lemurs, bushbabies and lorises, while the haplorrhines or “dry-nosed” primates include monkeys, apes and humans.

While some of Ida’s features similar to those of strepsirrhines, she lacks two key characteristics of modern lemurs: a grooming or “toilet claw” on the second digit of her foot and a fused row of teeth on the lower jaw known as a toothcomb. The absence of these traits is typical of haplorrhines such as humans, as is the shape of the talus bone in Ida’s foot, which resembles its human equivalent.




Further information is available from www.revealingthelink.com

I love that they named it 'Darwinius'. =)

I refuse to believe that I have "animal genes" in me, or that my species branched off of animals, it just creeps me out to think If I was born 1,000,000,000,000,000 years ago, I could have been a gorilla or a chimpanzee or whichever monkey animal was developed then!

but you didnt :)

Humans are animals no matter how you look at it, we're just advanced animals ;).

Hey if you go on google:

errr... ah

wow. yeah, this is really big news. apparently next Tuesday will be a documentary about it on TV

I find it more realistic that we came from a monkey than a chump called Adam and a dumb slut called Eve. Haha monkey...

HAHAHA.. agreed.

I believed in evolution up until I was 14, I dont really know why I stopped believing, I guess because I learned that they had no proof.

No proof? How is there no proof?
As one of my professors put it: Look at the common cold. Why can't we cure the common cold? Because the cold is a virus and viruses evolve. And there's many different types of them.

Evolution is real. Look at the abundance of fossil evidence--footprints, skeletons, and so on. Look at the fact that we have wisdom teeth we don't need or an appendix.
The reason humans have many lower-back problems is that we weren't originally bipedal and bipedalism is a fairly "new" (in evolutionary terms, that is about 4 million years ago, maybe older depending on the evidence you use) development for us.

I could go on for ages (I know, unfortunately), but I have class now. :(

But, I will end with my dorkiest statement yet: evolution is real and so freaking cool.

What does a virus have to do with humans? There is nothing relevant between human ancestry and a virus that evolves.

Your statement ("Evolution is real") is just that: your statement. You can't expect to just will proof into the mix, because it's not there. You will hold to your hypothesis and theories, and Christians will hold to their faith. The reason we have back problems is because we don't take care of our backs. It's pure and simple.

I do not totally and explicitly disagree with your theories, or at least part of them. I do believe that some portion of evolution did occur, but I don't think that the result was us.

Errrmm, you're reading way too much into what I said. I was comparing EVOLUTION with virus. I didn't say: "Humans originated from viruses!!!" I said viruses evolve. That's it. LOL! It has nothing to do with humans, other than humans catch colds.

I'm fairly certain I've already pointed out some proof (the Laetoli footprints and Lucy's skeleton, I posted Wikipedia links up there since Wikipedia is easily assessable.) I don't understand how I've willed Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, etc. etc. etc. into being? I don't understand how a solid piece of evidence (i.e. bone and fossils) is not proof? (Human evolution didn't occur in one line, of course, there were many branches (and Homo sapiens and Neanderthals co-existed for a long period of time, something I've always found very interesting), but we're the only ones left (out of the genus Homo).)

Hypotheses and theories are great, though! What people don't know about them is that they're not guesses. A hypothesis has to be able to stand up to repeated testing and if something is proven wrong (such as with new evidence), the hypothesis has to be changed and rewritten and re-thought. After a hypothesis has survived and cannot be proven false, it becomes a theory. A theory isn't a guess, but it's an explanation of something that's occurred--evolution.

I have a question, then: what do you consider proof? That is, solid proof. What would you like to see to believe that the human evolution is real?

i think the fact that you say 'depending on what evidence you use', just goes totally against what you are saying

I knew someone was going to say that! That's the curse of the lack of an edit button. ;D Recent evidence has come out that has pushed the date of bipedalism back to 6 million years (instead of about 4 million), but I don't know enough about the evidence and hadn't fulled read up on it, so I didn't want to say anything if I hadn't fully investigated it. ;D It's not that there's sketchy evidence, it's just that I didn't want to claim anything if I didn't know enough about it. :)

Different theories have different date and time estimates, but can have similar suggestions and interpretation of evidence overall.

How is that? Considering Adam and Eve were, after all, humans. Do you have a mother and a father? Are they human? I can, with 100% certainty, say they are. So, given the fact that Adam and Eve are humans, as well, how can you say that you couldn't be related?

And what gives you the mind to call him a chump and her a "dumb slut?" Did you know them personally?

I don't believe that Adam and Eve were the first (and only) humans ever created and that were all their inbred descendants. Even when I was a little kid it didn't make sense to me, I remember asking where all the dinosaurs went and why they had farm animals.

Sure dinosaurs were probably mostly extinct by time men were walking around, but thats just the thing, there was more than one human being walking around by then, clubbing each other, living in caves... then farming, then making towns and cities, then making up stories about two naked people that were put down on earth by some higher force and were punished because of a talking snake, then back clubbing each other with nastier things, all in the time span of thousands and thousands of years. This is proof enough to me that our cave dwelling ancestors were smart enough to stay alive and evolve and grow to the way we are now.

There could be some references and relations from Adam and Eve to evolution, but Adam and Eve is a story, that I didn't believe in.

It's just an observation, Adam was a lazy chump and Eve was a silly girl that gave into a snakes charm.

Chillax.

The story of adam and eve was a metaphor for the forbidden fruit- the Mushroom, and the mind expansion, talking with god/spirits, etc and all that goes with it.

If interested in this, please watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ3_nU2fu7g

and read what I wrote in the vid description, well, i can post that I suppose, some of it:

Although the mushroom (a fungi) is neither a vegetable or a fruit, it is referred to as the "fruit of the forest floor", "the fruiting body of the tree" when in the cup phase the top is called the "fruit cup", and so on...

"Recently it has been discovered that they are more closely related to animals. But at one time, Fungi, including mushrooms, were believed to be close relatives of plants so much of their nomenclature (names for parts of the mushroom) are close to the names used for plant parts. It is the fruit (like an apple) of the mushroom "body" and contain mushroom "seeds" called spores"
http://www.gmushrooms.com/info.htm


For 100's of years artist have used the apple to symbolize the forbidden fruit, which makes perfect sense, a red apple looks so much like the amanita muscaria, it's a way to represent the "fruit" of the body of the tree, without giving away the secret knowledge that the "fruit" of the mushroom contains.

keep in mind, there are 100's of different varieties of mushrooms, and only around 2% are edible. The amanita muscaria for example; is poisonous, and may cause death, if not prepared right.

In our evolution as a species, knowing what foods to eat, and what foods not to eat (poison) was a lot more important to survival, long before prehistoric man ever cared about mapping out the stars, and fabricated elaborate allegories to go along with them in what is today called "astrotheology"

Bit "Da Vinci Code" for me, but its quite interesting, I agree the "forbidden fruit" definately symbolises something, theres more to this story for sure.

Good stuff :)

Ahhh.

You.

Welcome back.

I thought I heard rumors that you were slinking around here on Bloop. :)

the rumors are all true

thanks :)

I'm sure we'll bump heads and bitch out at some point.

However, when it comes to this topic, I think we agree: Humans are creatures that evolve, both physically and mentally, and have done so for many, many years. :)