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Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email
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Posted Oct 21, 2009 by Tom Jackson
Updated Oct 21, 2009 at 05:01 PM
It turns out the so-called missing link, the single ancestor from which humans and the great apes are supposed to have diverged, has yet to be found.
Not that you would know if you’d caught May’s TV “documentary” based on the book, “The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor.” Experts denounced the claim at the time, and further research has confirmed their opinion. As the Associated Press reports:
NEW YORK - Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it “the link” that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.
Experts protested that Ida wasn’t even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.
In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.
Turns out Ida is more closely related to the branch of the primate tree that includes lemurs. Read the rest of the claim-shattering story here.
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