Much Ado About Great Aunt Ida

For a lemur, happiness is finding a long lost Great Aunt. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.





Joel Kontinen


The ado about a primate fossil known as Ida brings to mind the media circus surrounding the supposed finding of Jesus’ family tomb in 2007. The similarities are striking. A press conference and maximum publicity before an in-depth examination of the case.

Many serious scientists then protested the by-passing of peer review. Indeed, when they examined the case more closely, they found that the evidence was anything but convincing.

The Ida case is slightly different. While the fossil was introduced to the public at the American Museum of Natural History in New York on May 19th, it also had a research paper written and published in PloS ONE.

However, some scientists suspected that the study was far too superficial. They maintained that Science or Nature, for instance, would not have published such a paper. New Scientist also suspected that the ”hoopla” was ”unbridled”.

Sometimes, when there is a rush to publish a book and produce a TV documentary, money might be a more pertinent criterion than careful research.

Ida, who measures a metre or over three feet including the long tail, was named Darwinius massillae in honour of Charles Darwin’s 200th anniversary.

A private collector found the bones in 1983 in Messel, Germany. But it was not until Jörn Hurum, a paleontologist at the Oslo Natural History Museum obtained the remains of Ida that the era of Great Aunt speculation began in earnest.

There is a tendency in Israel, for instance, to be suspicious of finds bought from private collectors. China has had her share of fossil scandals, also. While not all collectors are crooks, we should not throw caution to the winds, either.


Ida, who is supposed to be 47 million years old, is remarkably well preserved: 95 per cent of her earthly remains are present. In contrast, Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis), one of the more complete fossils ever found, is only 40 per cent intact. Moreover, even the contents of Great Aunt Ida’s stomach are present.

Ida resembles the lemurs that are still found in Madagascar although she does not have a ”tooth comb” that they use for grooming their fur or a long ”grooming claw”.

The earthly remains of Great Aunt Ida are remarkably intact. Their preservation suggests a rapid catastrophic burial. Seen from a creationist perspective, poor Ida might well have met her end in the same world wide flood that probably also took the life of another icon of evolution – Grandmother Lucy.


Source:

Beard, Chris. 2009. Why Ida fossil is not the missing link. New Scientist. (21 May) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17173-why-ida-fossil-is-not-the-missing-link.html

National Geographic Remembers Scientific Hoaxes

In November 1999 National Geographic announced the discovery of Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, a supposed transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. It became known as the Piltdown bird, one of the greatest hoaxes in science of all time.



Joel Kontinen


To mark April Fool’s Day, National Geographic published the images of four of the most famous hoaxes in science. The choice of items in the collection speaks volumes of the gullibility of evolutionists. Three of them were supposed transitional forms: Piltdown man, Archaeoraptor liaoningensis and bigfoot (an imaginery apeman).

Archaeoraptor liaoningensis is National Geographic’s own production, so to speak. In 1999 the magazine published an article about a feathered dinosaur found in China but had to retrace it the following year since the creature was found to be a hoax.

Archaeoraptor turned out to be a veritable Piltdown bird. The Chinese fossil hunters had combined parts of different species to form a new “transitional fossil” that quickly made news headlines.



Sources:

National Geographic News. 2009. April Fools' Day Pictures: Four Historic Science Hoaxes.

Simmons, Lewis M. 2000. Archaeoraptor Fossil Trail. National Geographic 198:4, 128-132 (October 2000).

Sloan, Christopher P. 1999. Feathers For T. Rex. New Birdlike Fossils Are Missing Links In Dinosaur Evolution. National Geographic 196:5, 98-107 (November 1999).

The Lizard That Resisted Evolution For 100 Million Years

This tiny lizard resisted evolution for a very long time. Image from Wikipedia.


Joel Kontinen

Geckos are fascinating lizards that climb up walls and walk upside down on ceilings. A new discovery indicates that this ability did not develop very recently.

As reported by National Geographic News, researchers found the gecko's foot, toes and part of its tail in fossilised amber or tree sap. They were preserved so well that the lamellae, that is, the sticky hair-like structures that give geckos the ability to climb vertical walls and hang upside down from ceilings, are clearly seen.

The gecko looks exactly like its modern-day relatives although researchers at the Oregon State University estimated its age at 100 million years. The gecko, which was found in Burma (Myanmar), is said to be 40 million years older than the oldest known gecko fossil. It was thought to have lived in the lower Cretaceous before the heyday of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Evolutionists believe that thanks to its sticky lamellae this tiny gecko was able to walk upside down on cave ceilings much earlier that was supposed. Once again a fossil find suggests that evolution does not happen even in a hundred million years.

In On The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin admitted that the lack of suitable fossils weakened the credibility of the theory of evolution. In the book, Darwin discussed this problem for a whole chapter he chose to call “On the imperfection of the geological record”. He had to acknowledge: ”the distinctness of special forms, and their not being blended together by innumerable transitional links, is a very obvious difficulty.”

Darwin hoped that scientists would eventually find the needed missing links. However, 150 years after On The Origin of Species, the case for transitional forms is even weaker than it was Darwin’s day. For instance, nowadays many experts say that Archaeopteryx, which was advertised as the link between birds and reptiles, is a true bird. Moreover, living fossils such as the Coelacanth and the horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) also weaken the credibility of Darwinian evolution. The new gecko find likewise suggests that biological evolution is a theory that is not supported by facts.

What is more, the tiny gecko with its incredibly fine lamellae looks as though it has been designed ingeniously. After all, engineers are trying to find out whether they could emulate the sticky gecko foot in robot technology.

Sources:

Darwin, Charles. 1988 (1859). The Origin of Species. Ware: Wordsworth.


National Geographic News. 2008. Photo in The News. Oldest Gecko Fossil Found in Amber.(3 September) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080903-gecko-amber.html