The earth I tread on is not a dead, inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit, is organic, and fluid to the influence of its spirit, and to whatever particle of that spirit is in me. She is not dead, but sleepeth.
Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.
This 95%-complete 'lemur monkey' is described as the "eighth wonder of the world"
The search for a direct connection between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom has taken 200 years - but it was presented to the world today at a special news conference in New York.
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With her human-like nails instead of claws, and opposable big toes, she is placed at the very root of human evolution when early primates first developed features that would eventually develop into our own.
Another important discovery is the shape of the talus bone in her foot, which humans still have in their feet an incredible 70 million lifetimes later.
Creationist naysayers in 3...2...1. Some of the comments are hilarious... and sad:
It's a monkey! it was a Monkey then, and It is a Monkey now. It will be a Monkey to tomorrow. Its Just a MONKEY!
ps: my eye are open and ITS A MONKEY!!!!!!!
I bet darwin came up with the evolution theory after looking himself in the mirror one day he thought I look so much like a monkey there has to be a connection somewhere if anything probably thought like a monkey for me I believe in the almighty creator its not something that someone has told me or shown me its my and a lot of other peoples belief which only you can justify in your own way
I agree with Ken H. and Alluette, and I pray many will not be deceived by this "finding". Only God knows all the answers, but for me and my house, we will serve only the Lord God Almighty.
James, you are in our prayers.
Sigh... oh well, humanity forges on... more at Revealing The Link. Unfortunately, that site doesn't seem to work well with Firefox, so try IE.
She's beautiful and interesting and important, but I do have to take exception to the surprisingly frantic news coverage I'm seeing. She's being called the "missing link in human evolution", which is annoying. The whole "missing link" category is a bit of journalistic trumpery: almost every fossil could be called a link, and it feeds the simplistic notion that there could be a single definitive bridge between ancient and modern species. There isn't: there is the slow shift of whole populations which can branch and diverge. It's also inappropriate to tag this discovery to human evolution. She's 47 million years old; she's also a missing link in chimp evolution, or rhesus monkey evolution. She's got wider significance than just her relationship to our narrow line.
People have been using remarkable hyperbole when discussing Darwinius. She's going to affect paleontology "like an asteroid falling down to earth"; she's the "Mona Lisa" of fossils; she answers all of Darwin's questions about transitional fossils; she's "something that the world has never seen before"; "a revolutionary scientific find that will change everything". Well, OK. I was impressed enough that I immediately made Ida my desktop wallpaper, so I'm not trying to diminish the importance of the find. But let's not forget that there are lots of transitional forms found all the time. She's unique as a representative of a new species, but she isn't at all unique as a representative of the complex history of life on earth.
Damn scientists, with their "facts" and "logic" and "knowledge..."
