The Newest Oldest
Announcements to the media and lay public of the “newest oldest” fossil ancestors of mankind happen every few decades.
Often a news conference is often involved, usually featuring what looks like an Indiana Jones impersonator (minus the bull whip) ------ someone who is actually a sunburned field scientist “forced” uncomfortably and uncharacteristically to wear a tweed sport coat for the occasion (often sans tie), but also often with a weather-beaten soft hat, itself constituting a kind of field researcher chic.
These media events are usually arranged after one serious, significant paper, or more often, a series of serious, significant papers in top journals of general science such as Science, Nature, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or in the top more specialized journals of paleoanthropology, such as the American Journal of Physical Anthropology or its formidable competitor, the Journal of Human Evolution, has appeared, and some time for its discussion has passed.
This sequence of scientists having their say first in arenas that matter a great deal to them than they do to the general public, such as the aforementioned journals, is for a very good reason.
The manuscripts that make it into those journals often have to face grueling rounds of peer-review qualifying critiques first, and then, and only then, is it customary for reporters have a go at the news.
A key feature of such a paper is that it takes fully into account previously published research that disagrees with the new findings, which the new paper has cited and discussed as completely as possible, and through which, the authors of the new paper demonstrates fully, that those earlier findings are wrong and they then provide the reasons for this new assessment.
This sequencing of holding off on public announcements, and having full disclosure of contradictory arguments that have been published in the reputable scientific literature is intended largely to avoid at the least, any overreaching of the scientific evidence by its discoverers, and, at the worst, to make cases of fraud extremely difficult, if not impossible, to foist on either the community of scientists or on the general public, in most cases.
Furthermore, this sequence keeps science and to some degree, scientists, from being distrusted, or made laughing stocks, because subsequent investigations by news reporters, will not be able to uncover any trickery or hyperbole, that suggests that there was a conspiracy of scientists, to simply make the story up for the sake of publicity for a particular institution, or for the enrichment of the individual scientist’s funding.
This would not be because scientists or their sponsors are particularly good at covering all traces of fraud or exaggeration.
It’s because there aren’t any to speak of in the first place.
This is not to say that some of the most reputable universities, natural history museums, and research foundations, do not seize, as often as possible, on favorable, substantially verified, and scientifically thorough news, whose first appearance was in a science journal of some renown, in a manner that encourages stronger political and financial support for research done by their researchers.
Ida
Ida is the pet name for the fossil remains of a primate scientifically classified as Darwinius massilae. It got its scientific name from the founder of modern evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, and from the district within Germany in which it was found: Grube Messel, “the Messel Pit” a place near Frankfurt. The pet name Ida matches that of the daughter of Jorn Hurum, one of the underlying scientific paper’s coauthors.
The paper was not published in one of the established elite journals, but on May 19th, 2009, rather in an open access, free-to-all-readers, electronic journal, PLoS ONE, that is making a bid to join those other journals at the top, and perhaps even to displace them.
In doing so, PLoS ONE was taking a risk it saw as worthwhile, because the back story of this paper seemed so compelling. Likewise, the authors of the paper were taking a risk in not going to one of the better known elite journals, but had the advantage of very speedy publication, a strength emphasized by that journal, which is, to its credit, also peer-reviewed as a measure of quality control.
There are several undeniable scientific firsts and truths about Ida, and the paper reporting her findings:
· It is the oldest fossil primate found to date, reliably dated at over four million years old.
· That the scientists who eventually acquired the two halves of the fossil, clearly identified from the start, than an earlier collector had tried to forge marks that would show half the fossil to be of itself, a complete outline, whereas, the other half, which was eventually purchased by the Natural History Museum of the University of Oslo, was in fact, its almost totally complete, and unfalsified partner.
· It is stunningly well preserved, and almost completely intact, with not only the hard skeleton, but also the outlines of several of the major organs, and perhaps even of its stomach contents.
· The specimen is of a female.
· The skeleton had an unusually complete set of erupting teeth, that squarely placed it as an adolescent of the species, probably about 9 months to one year old.
· It can be reasonably determined to have been weaned and feedings independently at the time of its death. The diet was most likely fruit and leaves.
· Based on comparisons with primitive primates that are still living, Ida would have had the potential life span of 20 years.
· Ida was a locomotory generalist. She was not specialized for climbing, but could do so. She was not built for a life of constant leaping, but could leap is she wanted to do so.
· Her skull and particularly her eye sockets are more like primitive primates who have nocturnal lives.
All of the above statements seem scientifically well supported by the fossil data. If there were no further pronouncements, Ida would likely have stood, uncontested, as one of the top two finds in paleoanthropology over the last five years.
But instead, Ida was introduced on the following day, May 20th ,2009, to the public at a gala news conference at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, about the same time a television documentary on the find narrated by Sir Richard Attenborough, was to appear.
And, a book for the lay public was surprisingly also ready for distribution (see Tudge & Young, 2009, cited below), a circumstance that would have been virtually impossible without the leaking of the information to the book’s authors by members of the research team.
There even was t-shirt line available whose front said: “The Link: This changes everything.”
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, somehow managed to be the host for this major media event, in which he termed the fossil find “the missing link connecting humans and apes.”
Ordinarily, a scientific claim made even by a highly educated lay person like the mayor would have been quickly forgotten by the scientific press and public, because they understand, at least in the long run, that being a politician and media mogul who runs even a large city does not qualify Mayor Bloomberg as a paleoanthropologcal expert.
Even the claim made at the press conference by Sir Richard Attenborough: “The link until now was missing. Well, it is no longer missing. ” could be forgiven as being the opinion of a distinguished narrator of nature and history films, as opposed to being that of a distinguished scientist.
But ultimately, it was what the scientists at the news conference had to say that has had the most staying power.
One of the authors, Jorn Hurum, father of the daughter Ida, proclaimed that “It will probably be pictured in all the textbooks for the next 100 years.”
Jens Franzen, another author on the team, reportedly said: “When our results are published, it will be just like an asteroid hitting the earth. She is the eighth wonder of the world.”
The scientists present said that they were deliberately pumping up the excitement of this paleontological find, because this kind of self-promotion is done with great effect by rock bands and star athletes all the time, and should be tried out by scientists as well.
None of this went down very well with the rest of the scientific community.
There were two notable disconnects:
First, unlike their public pronouncements, there was no direct claim that Ida was clearly the missing link, but rather that she was a lemur-like animal, and that descent from lemur-like animals was one possible route to the coevolution of monkeys, apes, and man that deserved more serious consideration.
Second, despite 27 pages of double-columned text and illustrations, and 81 references, the paper did not appear seriously to engage the consensus opinion that the lemur line has given us lemurs, and not monkeys, apes, or humans, and in fact, it has only given us a small number of contemporary lemurs and their kin.
On the day of this posting, a paper in Nature (see Seiffert et al., 2009, cited below) suggests that Ida is a representative of a dead end species that is at best a very remote relative, and a relative only in the sense that she is a primate, more than any kind of direct or common ancestor.
In other words, it’s like my saying that I’m a relative of Michael Bloomberg, just because we are both humans. (Well, it is true that we are also both Republicans, but he’s still the only one of us who is a billionaire.)
Ardi
Ardipithecus ramidus is also a find of some 4+ millions year old, and was also female.
She, and many fossil scraps of her contemporaries were found in the Awash River basin, a part of the Afar district in Ethiopia, ironically about 50 miles from where the famous Lucy, a relative youngster at only 3 million or so years, was found.
There was in fact, a documentary film being made in conjunction with the find, but in contrast to the relatively rushed and rather quick to judgment “The Link”, “Discovering Ardi” has been ten years in the making.
And while there were simultaneous news conferences in the US and Ethiopia, about the most excited utterance to have been reported in the media world-wide came from one of the many coauthors, C. Owen Lovejoy from Kent State University: “It (meaning Ardi, the archeological site and/or the museum) is just a treasure-trove of surprises”.
In contrast to the race to publish, that seemed to be the case with Ida, the large scientific team that ultimately included more than 40 predominantly western university-based authors and scores of Ethiopians, both scientifically trained, as well as careful layperson fossil hunters and security guards (known as Obama Police, at their own insistence) was pressured to release results by a scientific community that had grown impatient of waiting over 15 years to have them written up.
The master of ceremonies of the release of the real science, so to speak, was not Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but rather the distinguished and perhaps more avuncular-appearing Bruce Alberts, Ph.D., a past president of three major scientific societies, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science. His single page introduction to a special section in the October 2nd, 2009 issue of Science, that was devoted to Ardi, was modest and served primarily to provide context for the 11 coprehensive anlyses, totaling almost 100 pages, including many diagrams and illustrations, and buttressed by hundreds of citations.
· Not unlike Ida, Ardi was small.
· Ardi appeared to have a somewhat larger brain, and more evolved feet. She could walk easily on ground or along the length of the horizontal branches of he trees, and and she could climb to get into those trees.
· Ardi did not, however, have strong arms, suitable for swinging through the trees or for knuckle-walking (these appear to have evolved later in monkeys and apes.)
· Ardi’s dentitition also suggested a largely fruit and leaves diet.
· Ardi’s habitat, which was much more extensively analyzed, was woodland rather than wetland or dry plains.
· Ardi’s neighbors included various kinds of antelope-like creatures that also favored woodland habitats, and which browsed rather than grazed.
· Ardi has a better claim to have been a common ancestor to humans, monkeys, and apes, but abundant as is, the evidence, it is not pressed relentlessly or with much showmanship. Ironically in terms of those who think like publicists, this has caused it to be received far more seriously by the scientific community.
Of course, there is still a bit of unusual flair. In a style that is very unlike that of most articles in Science, head shot photographs of some of the authors are included. I counted at least ten Indiana Jones hats!
Tony Stankus, FSLA [email protected] Life Sciences Librarian, Science Coordinator, and Professor
University of Arkansas Libraries MULN 233 E
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Achenbachk, J. (October 2, 2009). "Ardi" may rewrite the story of humans: 4.4 million year old primate helps bridge evolutionary gap. Washington Post, A section, p.A1.
Alberts, B. (2009). Understanding human origins. Science, 326, 17.
Associated Press. (October 23, 2009). Fossil skeleton known as Ida is no ancestor toof humans. New York Times, p. A17.
Feanzen, J.L., Gingerich, P.D., Haversetzer, J., Hurum, vov Koenigswald, W. et al. 2009. Complete primate skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 4 (5), e5723. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723
Gibbons, A. (2009). Habitat for humanity. Science, 326, 40.
Gibbons, A. (2009). A new kind of ancestor: Ardipithecus unveiled. Science, 326. 36-40.
Gibbons, A. (2009). Gibbons, A. (2009). The view from Afar. Science, 326, 41-43.
Hale, M. (October 10, 2009). The newest oldest ancestor tells her tale. New York Times, Section C, p. 1.
Hanson, B. (2009). Light on the origin of man. Science, 326, 60-63.
Keim, B. (October 21, 2009). Bone crunching debunks “First Monkey” Ida fossil hype. Wired Science, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10reconfiguring-ida/
Leake, J. & Harlow, J. (May 24, 2009). Origin of the specious: Ida, the fossil hailed as the “missing link” in our evolution. The Sunday Times (London), 2nd edition.
Louchart, A., Wesselman, H., Blumenschine, R.J., Hlusko, L., Njau, J.K., Black, M.T., Asnake, M. & White, T.D. (2009). Taphonomic, avian, and small invertebrate indicators of Ardipitehecus ramidus habitat. Science, 326, 66e1-66e4.
Lovejoy, C.O. (2009). Reexamining human origins in light of Ardipitheicus ramidus. Science, 326, 74e1-74e8.
Lovejoy, C.O., Latimer, B., Suwa, G., Asfaw, B. & White, T.D. (2009). Combining prehension and propulsion: The foot of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science, 326, 72e1-72e8.
Lovejoy, C.O., Simpson, S.W., White, T.D., Asfaw, B. & Suwa, G. (2009). Careful climbing in the Miocene: The forelimbs of Ardipethicus ramidus and humans are primitive. Science, 326, 70e1-70e8.
Lovejoy, C.O., Suwa, G., Simpson, S.W., Matternes, J.H., & White, T.D. (2009). The great divides: Ardipithecus ramidus revels the post crania of our last common ancestors with African apes. Science, 326, 100-106.
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Maugh, T.H., & Susman, T. (May 20, 2009) Most complete fossil of primate revealed. Find expected to shed light on evolution. The Boston Globe.
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WoldeGabriel, G., Ambrose, S.H., Barboni, D., Bonnefille, R., Bremond, L., Currie, B., DeGusta, D., Hart, W.K., Murray, A.M., Renne, P.R., Jolly-Saad, M.C., Stewart, K.M., & White, T.D. (2009). The geological, isotopic, botanical, invertebrate, and lower vertebrate surroundings of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science, 326, 65e1-65e5.
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