Missing Link Found Could Show Human Ancestry Past

On Tuesday, researchers unveiled the missing link, a 47-million-year-old fossil that scientists believe could help understand how humans evolved. The findings were placed on display during an event at the American Museum of Natural History. The fossil is the size of a small cat or dog, has four legs, and a very long tail. It resembles nothing of humans or even monkeys in my opinion and researches at the news conference indicated that nobody is claiming it does, but they hope it will provide a good indication of what ancestors may have looked like long ago.

Ida
The fossil found, which has been named Ida - was retrieved from the Messel Pit in Germany. Ida was named Ida as she was almost 6 years old when she died, and one of the leading scientists and author of The Missing Link has a daughter that age. Thus the nickname. 

47 million years ago, scientists knew that Ida lived once in a rain forest which had over 300 specific of plants and animals. Many of the plants that grew in the Messel rain forest are only found in the tropics and subtropics today.

To put the Ida fossil in contrast with the timelines of humans, it's said to be believed that humans emerged about 200,000 years ago but early humans (Australopithecus anamensis) were around back 4 million years ago. Humans as we know them today was thought to have split off from the group of chimpanzees and gorillas about 5-6 million years ago. And a group that includes all the great apes (including us) and Old World monkeys (called simians or anthropoids) diverged from New World monkeys in the Eocene, just after the time of Ida. So our primate roots reach back to this time - at least that's what evolutions believe. I along with others have different opinions on how humans evolved, but I'll try to keep my religious beliefs out of this fossil finding.



Scientists performed x-rays to hopefully uncover more evidence of how Ida might have died. During their research they found a broken wrist that may have contributed to Ida's death - as it was healing from a very bad fracture, but nobody really knows exactly what happened.

What do you believe?

In other recent fossil findings this year, there was a mammoth skeleton fossil found in LA and a 60 million year old 42 foot long snake found in Columbia.