Although bearing a long tail, Ida had several characteristics shared by humans such as an opposable thumb, relatively short arms and legs, and forward facing eyes
Credit: The Link
Ida gives a glimpse into a time when the world was just taking its present shape. Dinosaurs were recently extinct, the Himalayas were forming and a huge range of mammals thrived in vast jungles.
According to the research team, the primate had suffered a badly broken wrist and that this might have been her undoing. Their theory is that while drinking from the Messel lake she was overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and fell in.
Last supper
"Ida slipped into unconsciousness, was washed into the lake, and sunk to the bottom, where the unique conditions preserved her for 47 million years," they said. Her last meal shows she was a herbivore – the gut contents revealed remains of fruits, seeds and leaves.
The press conference was unusually strongly hyped for a scientific event and the announcement was tied into a media campaign including the release of the documentary.
Chris Beard, a fossil expert at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, U.S., told the BBC news service that he was "awestruck" by the level of publicity that accompanied the announcement.
Other experts were excited by the find, but expressed doubts that the fossil would end up being a direct ancestor to humans.
At Last
Brilliant; very, very exciting. I have been waiting for this a long time, of course there is there was so much we will never find; but we now do have Ida. I'm glad about the media hype; about time this kind of find was seen as significant. The 'hobbits' and other homo finds are very interesting, and no doubt there will be more, but this is far more important; my idea of the missing link too.
missing link???
We should have known the forerunner of humanity was going to be a type of rat!
"Ratman"
What a load of rubbish. Talk about grasping at any opportunity to expose macro evolutionary theory. A lot a animals have "human" characteristics". Cats have forward facing eye's, frogs have over 90% human DNA etc etc. These scientists should really sit down and have a good look at the "evidence" and try and interpret it in a truly unbiased way. Don't always put it in a evolutionary frame, is there something else? Don't always follow the established dogma of evolution. Where did the new DNA information come from to make this creature evolve into something else?
Looks like the distant cousin of a rat to me! Rats are rats and always will be...