Welcome to the "OOPS!" file.
Where periodically I will post retractions of what started out to be world changing finds, sensational headlines and ultimate proofs that evolution works.
"Teeth and ankle bones of the new Egyptian specimen show that the 47-million-year-old Ida, formally called Darwinius masillae, is not in the lineage of early apes and monkeys (haplorhines), but instead belongs to ancestors (adapiforms) of today's lemurs and lorises." (Rex Dalton
NATURE, Published online 21 October 2009 | Nature 461, 1040 (2009) | doi:10.1038/4611040a )
Original Propaganda:
Fossil Ida: Extraordinary find is 'missing link' in human evolution
"Perfectly preserved fossil Ida, unveiled in New York today, provides unprecedented insight into our ancestry... Hurum would not reveal what the university museum paid for the fossil, but the original asking price was $1m. He did not see the fossil before buying it just three photographs, representing a huge gamble.
But it appears to have paid off. "You need an icon or two in a museum to drag people in," said Hurum, "this is our Mona Lisa and it will be our Mona Lisa for the next 100 years."
"This will be the one pictured in the textbooks for the next hundred years," said Dr Jørn Hurum, the palaeontologist from Oslo University's Natural History Museum who assembled the scientific team to study the fossil. "It tells a part of our evolution that's been hidden so far.
It's been hidden because the only [other] specimens are so incomplete and so broken there's nothing almost to study."
" (James Randerson, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 May 2009 15.30 BST)
Isn't the blue highlighted sentence interesting. This is what is known as a retroactive realignment of the truth. When evidence appears that fills a previous gap in evolution history, the gap will be admitted. Prior to the find though, gaps will be argued. The real problem now is when the findings are found to be inaccurate but now the gap has been "outed".
