*promote

Invocations (promote) cannot be called by Doc_M because Doc_M is not privileged - sorry.

blast. forgot. need two more stars.

"blast. forgot. need two more stars."

aww, one now

I can though *promote.

It's easy to be skeptical, as it all seems too good to be true... but Attenborough, that's some serious cred having him weigh in.

So... I guess we can say "Suck it creationists"

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 6:30pm PDT - promote requested by spoco2.

Article from BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8057465.stm

I love how each year we unearth (pardon the pun) more evidence confirming evolution.
*doublepromote

"She could also question religion itself."
Unfortunately creationist nutjobs have been exposed to lots and lots of scientific proof that are in direct conflict with their "beliefs", and they're still being bats*it insane, so I don't think this will help in that department, really. Instead I'm happy for the advance it will provide for real science and in understanding the evolution of our species.

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 11:30pm PDT - doublepromote requested by EDD.

Rock solid first sift!

I can't wait to get back to the states and talk to my Anthro Profs about this.

And the science is being done by lavoll's namesake!

Even Google are acknowledging Ida today.

Also, here's a good, humorous read on the media hype surrounding this: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/05/everything_changes.php

I'm glad they waited until Bush was out of office to debut this.

Holy crap that looks fake! So perfect! Well, if these experts turn out to be actual, factual experts then awesome! Attenborough could have been taken out of context... no... this is just HUGE!

A million is not much money for this... the collector must have had a pang of guilt at what he was withholding from the world. Or he was really stupid.

Another video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dqPymfiV7E

I wasn't aware that Darwinian evolution needed confirming. This piece is interesting as it applies to us, but to say that we need this to confirm Darwin's theory of evolution is just ridiculous. Proof abounds for evolution and this just adds to it. Evolution would still be fact without it.

Sir David Attenborough certainly knows his stuff regarding fossils and would be a very hard person to fool, so it seems this is what it claims to be which is great, and a very interesting specimen.

Wow.

Looks like the film about Ida will air on Monday, Memorial Day in the US on the History channel:

The world premiere of The Link, a two-hour event special, airs on Memorial Day – Monday May 25th, 2009 at 9pm ET/PT. It is being screened by History across the US.

Looks like Creationists are already denying this. lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dqPymfiV7E

Somebody should ask him what exactly is a "kind."

Can't upvote because of all the voice-over hyperbole.

Here's a nice article addressing the hyperbole about this fossil:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/05/19/darwinius-it-delivers-a-pizza-and-it-lengthens-and-it-strengthens-and-it-finds-that-slipper-thats-be
en-at-large-under-the-chaise-lounge-for-several-weeks/

"Embedding disabled by request"

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by mauz15.

Awarding eric3579 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

its so cool how fossils collected from that area have outlines of the fleshy and hairy and feathery parts...

http://www.livescience.com/animals/090520-fossil-reactions.html

It's been overhyped, unfortunately, and will ultimately weaken the general public's trust in science, I fear. The majority of scientists do not believe this is a direct ancestor of humans. The team revealing this fossil and claiming that it is are stating what they want to be true as truth, which is what we call "truthiness", aka *lies.

Adding video to channels (Lies) - requested by xxovercastxx.

I'll repeat what I've said elsewhere, This find has now almost been ruined by the overenthusiastic discoverers. Yes its a beautifully preserved fossil, yes it's plausible that its an early primate, yes, its an important find that helps us understand evolution better.

But this is NOT "the missing link" and its NOT "The link" These are simplistic slogans design to spark the interest of the public, but that ends up being a severe dumbing down of the subject, and in the end just make it easier to misunderstand evolution, and thus give creationists an easier time.

The term "missing link" is not only an irrelevant and outdated term from the time Darwin first discovered evolution by natural selection, but it even refers to a completely different transition, and thus a different era in evolution.

When Charles Darwin wrote "The Descent Of Man" he basically described what he had left out of "Origin": Humans and their role in evolution. Darwin used comparative anatomy and geographic distribution and other things to support the idea that we evolved from ancestors that we share with other apes. The idea was that, some time ago, our ancestors would look much more "ape-like" to us. They'd probably look alot like chimps to us, though, of course they wouldnt BE chimps, but the ancestor of chimps as well as our ancestors.

Earlier ancestors again would look more like monkeys to us, like "Ida", and even earlier ones would look lemur-like and so on.

The point is, that even tho the evidence Darwin had was very good, we hadnt actually found the "half-human" fossils just yet, the kind that might or might not be bi-pedal, that had bigger brains than chimps, but smaller brains than us, the kind that had more hair than us, but less than other apes, and so on, it is this transition, "from ape to man*" that is meant by a "missing link"

Today we have found many of these "missing links" and its obvious to scientists, as it probably was to Darwin as well, that there is no "one missing link" but a scattered mess of our ancestors relatives, that are more often than not cousins of the "human line" in the tree of life.

Ida is one of many "links" but she's much further back in time, she's probably quite closely related to the ancestor of ALL primates, not just humans, and that's in many respects just as exciting as later, hominid (big brain, bipedal, hairless) evolution, some would say even more exciting, but these simplistic terms does not make it more exciting, just dumber.

*dead

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