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Science reporting needs a good sharp kick in the arse
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Be fair . You wouldn't really expect decent reporting in a tabloid , let alone decent reporting on science.
something like this is better
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As one of the most significant primate fossil finds ever made, Ida will be hailed by some as "the missing link" in our evolutionary history. But is that really true? Well, yes and no.
The phrase usually refers to the creature that links us to the apes, in particular the common ancestor of chimpanzees and ourselves. At 47m years old, Ida – or Darwinius masillae, to use her formal name – is much more ancient than that. But she is undoubtedly a very significant link in the primate lineage and the evidence from her extraordinarily well-preserved skeleton points to her being a very early member of our own primate line.
The fossil evidence of primate evolutionary history is sparsely populated – more missing than link. So almost any major primate fossil at a significant point in our ancestral line could be referred to by that over-used phrase.
Also, filling the gap is not the end of the story. "Every time you find a link that once was missing, you find two more, you've created two more that are missing. So it's never going to be a complete chain," said Sir David Attenborough, who is narrating a BBC documentary on the fossil.
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Or from the fella quoted in the NYDNews piece
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"[The species] could represent a stem group from which later anthropoid primates evolved [the line leading to humans], but we are not advocating this here."
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or on the criticism of his use of the term "missing link"
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"Why not? I think we could use that phrase for this kind of specimen," he said. "[People] have a feeling that if something is important it is a missing link."
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