A missing link in human evolution?

2009/05/21 Kortabitarte Egiguren, Irati - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Eboluzioa
• Paleontologia
• Arkeologia

Ida fossil, which can be a missing link in human evolution, has been presented at a press conference held in New York. The fossil was discovered in Germany in 1983 and lived 47 million years ago. According to the press conference, “it is a revolutionary scientific discovery that will bring changes.”

The subject has provoked a great debate. Some believe that the fossil can help decipher the lost relationship between primitive and human primates. It is believed to be the oldest anthropoid ever found. Others believe that this discovery will not give us new information.

International researchers have been studying the origin of anthropoids (groups of large primates, ie monkeys, man, etc. ). The oldest anthropoid fossil was discovered in Egypt and lived 32 and 35 million years ago. Since then, older fossils have been found in China and India, which lived 45 million years ago. And for most researchers, these fossils are also not fossils of the oldest anthropoids. A few say that anthropoids come from a more primitive group of primates, adapted ones.

This is what the paleontologists of the University of Oslo and the University of Michigan have said in an article published in the journal PloS One. To reach this conclusion, they have studied the skeleton through a high resolution tomography and have seen that it has the face, teeth and feet of the group of adapted Cercamoniinae. In this group of Adapted are mainly included anthropoids (and humans). In addition, among other things, they have seen that the heel bone of his foot has a similar appearance to that developed by man thousands of years later. Therefore, the adapted ones refer to the relationship between primitive primates and anthropoids, which makes them human ancestors.

These clarifications have not convinced all paleontologists. For many, these conclusions cannot be drawn only by analyzing about 30 characteristics, when it is possible to analyze 200 or 400 characteristics.

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