From Yahoo news): The tiny creature, officially known as Darwinius masillae, but dubbed Ida, lived 47 million years ago and is unusually well preserved, missing only part of a leg, or five percent of the skeleton. ..... Ida [was] first discovered in 1983 by private collectors who failed to understand her importance -- and split the bones into two lots.
The monkey-like creature was preserved through the ages in Germany's Messel Pit, a crater rich in Eocene Epoch fossils.
Although bearing a long tail, she had several human characteristics, including an opposable thumb, short arms and legs, and forward facing eyes. She also lacked two key elements of modern lemurs: a grooming claw and a row of lower teeth known as the toothcomb....
Ida gives a glimpse into a time when the world was just taking its present shape. Dinosaurs were extinct, the Himalayas were forming and a huge range of mammals thrived in vast jungles. According to the international team, Ida had suffered a badly broken wrist and that this might have been her undoing. The theory is that while drinking from the Messel lake she was overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and fell in.
6 comments:
VERY cool.
From Yahoo news):
The tiny creature, officially known as Darwinius masillae, but dubbed Ida, lived 47 million years ago and is unusually well preserved, missing only part of a leg, or five percent of the skeleton.
..... Ida [was] first discovered in 1983 by private collectors who failed to understand her importance -- and split the bones into two lots.
The monkey-like creature was preserved through the ages in Germany's Messel Pit, a crater rich in Eocene Epoch fossils.
Although bearing a long tail, she had several human characteristics, including an opposable thumb, short arms and legs, and forward facing eyes. She also lacked two key elements of modern lemurs: a grooming claw and a row of lower teeth known as the toothcomb....
Ida gives a glimpse into a time when the world was just taking its present shape. Dinosaurs were extinct, the Himalayas were forming and a huge range of mammals thrived in vast jungles.
According to the international team, Ida had suffered a badly broken wrist and that this might have been her undoing. The theory is that while drinking from the Messel lake she was overcome by carbon dioxide fumes and fell in.
You do know that these were planted in the earth by the Devil to fool us, right?
Yes, we are all monkeys!
Now please stop twittering on about someone in the sky.
And please change those vestments back into tablecloths.
Come on IT, I was sure that you would take my bait!
BTW FreddiePee, we are not descended from monkeys. We are a form of ape, closer to chimpanzees.
Laugh while-a you can, monkey boy!
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