(March 5) --Touted as "the missing link" between humans and early primates, a 47-million-year-old fossil appears to be an ancestor to lemurs
instead, a newly released study says. The debate, however, seems far from over, and it illuminates the often tricky relationship between science and
the media.
Last spring, when Norwegian paleontologist Jorn Hurum and his colleagues announced the unveiling of "Ida," an unusually complete prehistoric primate
fossil, it was portrayed in newspaper and television reports as a blockbuster discovery nothing short of an "eighth wonder of the world" that would
offer a look at one of mankind's earliest evolutionary ancestors.
No small part of that excitement was due to Hurum himself, who had provided media outlets with a teasing press release ahead of the official
announcement at New York's American Museum of Natural History that heralded the fossil as "a revolutionary scientific find that will change
everything."
Jennifer Graylock, jpistudios.com
Some scientists doubt that this fossil, dubbed Ida, is from an early ancestor of humans, as paleontologist Jorn Hurum contends.
The hype surrounding Darwinius masillae, the scientific name given to Ida, preceded the publication of Hurum's research in a peer-reviewed journal.
"Normally, you have the paper first, lots of scrutiny by other scientists and then the media enters the picture," Blythe Williams, a visiting
professor of paleontology at Duke University, told AOL News.
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This is good news, I never bought that we evolved from Primates, if that were the case why are they still around today, I know some scientist say it
was a mutation, not buying that either.
