download The Fray song free video Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back cheap George Strait hit qualitive avi Kung Fu Panda free music Flo-Rida nice movies Coraline get song Lily Allen buy hot Home DVD Only By The Night song DVD State of Play movies

Missing link in human evolution

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 May 2009 23:21 Written by InfoWeb

Scientists have discovered a 47-million-year-old fossil which could provide the missing link between animals and humans.

The skeleton was discovered 26 years ago in Germany and lost in museums, until a paleontologist realized that it could be the missing link in human evolution chain.

The oldest skeleton of a monkey found by now has been already called Ida and is almost 95% intact. The remnants of fur is visible, the fruits and leaves from creature’s last meal had been preserved in its stomach. Ida had four legs, long tail and was about the size of a small cat. Hands have five fingers like primates and the opposable thumb is human-like.

Details of the discovery were presented in May 2009 at New York's Museum of Natural History, at a special conference.

According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, a creature had existed before that could have shared physical features of apes and humans. Until now have been found only Australopithecus, the Neanderthal man, the Ramaphitecus, etc., but some of them based on their physical features respond to be actual apes, or to close to humans (hominids).

An unfound creature that is a link between animals and humans is called "the missing-link of human evolution" and its discovery would prove the evolution theory.

The discovery of Ida skeleton is called “eighth wonder of the world” because it could be the missing-link in the human evolution chain. Thus, it’s another reason of debates between “evolutionists” and “creationists”.

Useful links:
What is exactly "the missing link supposed to be",
Explore the missing link - Interactive,
Set to reveal the missing link of human evolution

English (United Kingdom)

NASA Image Of The Day

NASA Image Of The Day
Snapshot of the International Space Station
On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image was taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR...
10 Mar 2010
800x6001024x768Large

Sponsored