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Published online 21 October 2009 | Nature 461, 1040 (2009) | doi:10.1038/4611040a

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Fossil primate challenges Ida's place

Controversial German specimen is related to lemurs, not humans, analysis of an Egyptian find suggests.

Rex Dalton

A 37-million-year-old fossil primate from Egypt, described today in Nature1, moves a controversial German fossil known as Ida out of the human lineage.

Teeth and ankle bones of the new Egyptian specimen show that the 47-million-year-old Ida, formally called Darwinius masillae, is not in the lineage of early apes and monkeys (haplorhines), but instead belongs to ancestors (adapiforms) of today's lemurs and lorises.

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  • Oh boy. Look for evolution skeptics to paint this situation as another example of scientific hubris leading to erroneous conclusions. Of course we recognize that this sort of disagreement between research groups is part of the normal peer review process in science, and what little I know of anthropology tells me that it is a discipline fraught with difficulties and with many major questions still unanswered. But perhaps a more cautious approach regarding "Ida" would have prevented anthropologists from handing the deniers yet another bludgeon with which to beat them.

    Nevertheless, the pieces of the primate evolutionary puzzle continue to fall into place, one by one, and for that I am grateful.

    • 27 Oct, 2009
    • Posted by: Curt Coman