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Humans, apes and monkeys all belong to a group called anthropoids. Debate has raged for decades about the origins of this group, but the prevailing view is that anthropoids likely sprung from either the extinct
omomyids or the tarsiers (large-eyed primates with living relatives in Southeast Asia).
The new 47-million year old primate fossil (Ida) unveiled to the world has made waves among scientists and non-scientists. Ida team advocate the minority hypothesis that in fact a third group, adapids, eventually gave rise to monkeys, apes and humans. They argue that Ida (scientific name: Darwinius masillae) is an adapid, and has features more closely aligned with anthropoids than with lemurs, who are thought to be adapid descendants.
Besides scientific objections, some paleontologists take issue with the way the discovery was announced. The research team unveiled the fossil Tuesday at a showy press conference at the American Museum of Natural History. A History Channel documentary and a book about the discovery, and Ida groups in Facebook are also being released to tout the news.
Most experts agree that the find is significant, if only for its impressive degree of completeness, but some were put off by the bells and whistles that went along with the internet publicity campaign around Ida. Some have applauded the push to get the public excited about science but they also disagreed with some of the outlandish claims researchers made, such as the suggestion that Ida represents a “missing link” between early primates and humans.
It’s very difficult to find anything besides teeth, a jaw, and bones here and there; Ida has almost every single fragment of the bones. This is something that really vaults the whole field forward and the real significance of this new find.