Many paleontologists are unconvinced. They point out that Hurum and Gingerich’s analysis compared 30 traits in the new fossil with primitive and higher primates when standard practice is to analyze 200 to 400 traits and to include anthropoids from Egypt and the newer fossils of Eosimias from Asia, both of which were missing from the analysis in the paper. “There is no phylogenetic analysis to support the claims, and the data is cherry-picked,” says paleontologist Richard Kay, also of Duke University. Callum Ross, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois agrees: “Their claim that this specimen should be classified as haplorhine is unsupportable in light of modern methods of classification.”

Other researchers grumble that by describing the history of anthropoids as “somewhat speculatively identified lineages of isolated teeth,” the PLoS paper dismisses years of new fossils. “It’s like going back to 1994,” says paleontologist K. Christopher Beard of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who has published jaw, teeth, and limb bones of Eosimias. “They’ve ignored 15 years of literature.”

Garbage in; garbage out. (And I’m not a Creationist, let alone a Biblical literalist Evangelical.) Google a sentence or two to find the science magazine’s web site as I ussed my clipboard to copy the quote rather than the URL.

Wouldn’t this be the 23rd wonder of the world?

As a geologist and palentologist, there is something a little… strange…. about this million-watt rollout. In addition, the bizarre provenence of this specimen makes me a little suspect, and the “missing link” hoopla is not scientific but off-putting.
Perhaps unintentionally, it brings up the old “Piltdown Man” scenario, and that is not something that Cenozoic paleontologists like to remember, kicking it back to the dumb anthropologists, whom they hate, anyway.

TexasJew on May 19, 2009 at 1:06 PM

I thought when I saw it (aside from all the fun I am reading now) that it was one of those bird evolutions, perhaps it had on front of that Snoopyish face, a curved beak akin to what we see in macaws today. After all, we have seen the bird evolution from a dinosaur variant.

Ok had enough of seriousspeak. Ol’ Chihuahua, ran over.

True. This theory has only gotten stronger over time. All theories are suspect including the ones that are the basis for electricity, chemistry, medicine-in short, everything that modern technology is based upon. Sure, some theories are stronger than others, but natural selection is a major foundation of the biological sciences. There is no such thing as ’scientific fact’…’fact’ is a term used by propagandists.
Dr. ZhivBlago on May 21, 2009 at 1:12 AM

False macro-evoultion theory has gotten weaker over time
The tree of life we were taught 20 years where neanderthal was in it has been debunked
We are not descendants from Neanderthals.
And what is interesting is that there were morons just like you teaching this little nugget as absolute fact.
Natural selection, adapation true, macro-evoultion not so much

Okay. This is a serious question. I went to Sea World a while back and as they were telling us all the amazing ways Orcas have evolved to be the biggest and best the sea has to offer… I started wondering why Grey whales evolved differently than Orcas… Were they the same once or have there always been both? I mean in evolution theory not real life.

Then I started wondering why there isn’t a strong trend toward a single predator and a single prey species.

Why isn’t natural selection making there less diversity instead of more. Everything should be getting more powerful all the time. It’s late I’m not sure I’m making sense… but all this evolution talk…

.

What’s even more amazing is calling a scientific theory accepted by 99.9% of the people who study life for a living “debunked.”

True. This theory has only gotten stronger over time. All theories are suspect including the ones that are the basis for electricity, chemistry, medicine-in short, everything that modern technology is based upon. Sure, some theories are stronger than others, but natural selection is a major foundation of the biological sciences. There is no such thing as ’scientific fact’…’fact’ is a term used by propagandists.

If a theory is no good, it will be discarded and in much less time than natural selection’s been around. If a theory keeps on leading scientists to new discoveries and explanations that lead to new technologies then it is probably a decent theory. Actually, a theory is a hypothesis backed up by data, time and acceptance by the scientific community. Shakier ideas not backed up/accepted they would call a hypothesis. Note that it’s not the ‘hypothesis of evolution’.

Biologists treat natural selection as an assumption because it’s so strong and it works for them. Just because all the mechanisms have not yet been nailed down doesn’t matter as this only takes time. I’d say that biologists are much more on the same sheet of music on this than we Christians are concerning transubstantiation, intercessions through the Virgin Mary, the dead Christ on the Cross vs. the arisen Christ/empty cross, etc.

It’s amazing how evolutionists will toss aside laws of physics and thermodynamics yet accept this as proof of their debunked 19th century religion… Scientific indeed…

CaliConstitutionalist on May 20, 2009 at 9:15 PM

What’s even more amazing is calling a scientific theory accepted by 99.9% of the people who study life for a living “debunked.”

[Coauthor Philip] Gingerich told the Wall Street Journal: “There was a TV company involved and time pressure. We’ve been pushed to finish the study. It’s not how I like to do science.”
“That rings all sorts of warning bells,” [University of New England paleoanthropologist Peter] Brown cautioned. He said that however it was prepared, the paper did not provide sufficient proof that Ida was the ancestral anthropoid.
“It’s nice it has fingernails, something we have, as do most primates . . . but they’ve cherry-picked particular character[istics] and they’ve been criticized (by other scientists) for doing that.”

Oh my! Raptor Jesus!

Mr. Joe on May 20, 2009 at 8:07 PM

Too funny…that was my thought exactly

I just saw this post and I am genuinely trying to be open minded about this. I was wondering if there was a simple way to explain the process of finding a fossil like this and then calling it “a missing link.” I am not trying to be obtuse. I was just curious about the scientific process. Thanks in advance.

Everything that currently exists has already been created and everything in the Universe is in a degenerative state.

Soooo…that means that we really didn’t trade in the horse for the automobile?

As for thermodynamics, energy doesn’t really run out…it just ends up as a useless form. Doesn’t mean that prior to potential energy vs. entropy equilibrium somewhere down the road, you can’t make a mountain out of a mole hill. ;-)

Nothing in nature evolves up to a higher form. Evolution, Global Warming and Socialism is a hoax. Apes are still apes, I asked one why he decided not to evolve. He explained that the chances of him being a college professor was too high, therefore he preferred his current status.

Easydoesit on May 20, 2009 at 7:39 AM

Indeed! This would violate the current laws of science including Everything that currently exists has already been created and everything in the Universe is in a degenerative state. But, that doesn’t square with Darwin so shhhh! We don’t talk about Thermodynamics and complicated stuff like that…

right4life on May 20, 2009 at 7:25 AM

Your posts are indeed hostile. Lots of people can see it.

Take a deep breath and recall some of the words of “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” (the prayer of Francis of Assisi):

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.
Amen.

Then come back and state your views more openheartedly, in a way that better respects others’ dignity and better preserves your own. My 2 cts.

That’s alright. I’ll just put these quotes here, so they’re all on one place next time.

yeah here’s what He’d say to people like you:

John 8:44
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

so yeah calling you an idiot is rather mild…but very truthful…

right4life on January 29, 2009 at 8:31 PM

‘trash’ is bad language? give me a break. its the truth…perhaps I should have just said:

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

the bible also says don’t cast pearls before swine…and many of these people are swine..do you think thats a bad word too?

right4life on December 21, 2008 at 10:18 AM

did your ‘father’ tell you that??

right4life on May 10, 2009 at 5:38 PM

obviously you have…but its your nature…like ‘father’ like son…(and no you won’t get the reference)

right4life on May 10, 2009 at 5:07 PM

as far as calling me a devil…anyone who preaches a doctrine of works is preaching doctrines of demons…

right4life on March 28, 2009 at 9:56 PM

And once again, this isn’t everything.

That an adapid once lived long ago (which is the only thing such a fossil tells us) does not imply that it is the common ancestor of anything but its own species.

That’s just the fact. It’s neither evolution nor creation.

Setting aside his own struggles with how the eye could have ever developed solely through natural processes. For macro-evolution to be true, he predicted that we would find millions of transitional fossils when we finally had the knowledge and techniques to excavate them. So…cool. If this “missing link” is a truly transitional fossil, which won’t be determined until after further investigations. It will be one. Not a million, but hey, it’s something and it raises the debate of whether finding a million fossils is necessary.

But to claim “all theories of evolution are true” because of this “missing link” is a shot in the dark. This missing link has little to say about: space time and matter coming from nothing in the Big Bang, chemical evolution, and supernatural abiogenesis.

How exciting.
That in itself is an admission that they didn’t have the missing link.
On what presuppositions and extrapolations were they expecting us to believe in the muck to mallards theory before now?

This appears to be, if you read the articles, just the biannual misleading headline nonsense to set off another round of arguments, soundbytes, and Google holidays.