M
M0nkey
Guest
Readers with any chaste interest in the sciences will have noticed an appalling load of codswallop being sledged through mass media this last week. I refer to reports of the “discovery” of what has been dubbed “Darwinius masellae” – or “Ida,” as its impresarios also call it.
The “star” of this Greatest Show on Earth is the nearly complete fossil skeleton of an animal from the middle Eocene (about 47 million years ago) from Messen, Germany. In a co-ordinated media blitz resembling a popular movie launch, “Ida” has been presented as the common ancestor of lemurs, apes and monkeys, and thus direct ancestor to ourselves.
Well, that understates the hype considerably. Consult the main publicity website (revealingthelink.com) and we learn that Ida is The Missing Link That Proves Darwinism! and paradoxically, The Fossil That Overturns Everything We Knew! It is “the Eighth Wonder of the World”! It is “like an Asteroid Falling Down to Earth”!
Dr. Jorn Hurum, the Norwegian pop paleontologist who is the brains behind this media splash, has been flashing pictures of the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone alongside his Ida. He calls her, “The Holy Grail of Paleontology!” and “The Lost Ark of Archaeology!”
Read The Book! (It is by Colin Tudge.)
See The Movie! (Made by Atlantic Productions.)
Buy The Souvenirs! (Various.)
Step Right Up! You’ve Never Seen B.S. On This Scale! - David Warren © Ottawa Citizen
davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1001
The “star” of this Greatest Show on Earth is the nearly complete fossil skeleton of an animal from the middle Eocene (about 47 million years ago) from Messen, Germany. In a co-ordinated media blitz resembling a popular movie launch, “Ida” has been presented as the common ancestor of lemurs, apes and monkeys, and thus direct ancestor to ourselves.
Well, that understates the hype considerably. Consult the main publicity website (revealingthelink.com) and we learn that Ida is The Missing Link That Proves Darwinism! and paradoxically, The Fossil That Overturns Everything We Knew! It is “the Eighth Wonder of the World”! It is “like an Asteroid Falling Down to Earth”!
Dr. Jorn Hurum, the Norwegian pop paleontologist who is the brains behind this media splash, has been flashing pictures of the Mona Lisa and the Rosetta Stone alongside his Ida. He calls her, “The Holy Grail of Paleontology!” and “The Lost Ark of Archaeology!”
Read The Book! (It is by Colin Tudge.)
See The Movie! (Made by Atlantic Productions.)
Buy The Souvenirs! (Various.)
Step Right Up! You’ve Never Seen B.S. On This Scale! - David Warren © Ottawa Citizen
davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?id=1001