Fascinating Ida

Posted on May 20th, 2009 by Rebecca Walton

Yesterday, a remarkably complete, 47-million-year-old fossil of an early primate, named Darwinius masillae, was unveiled to an audience in New York City at the same time as a scientific article documenting the discovery, Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology, was published in PLoS ONE. 24 hours later and the media response has been impressive, to put it mildly, with over 700 stories listed on Google News. Google even modified its homepage logo today in recognition of the importance of the fossil, nicknamed “Ida” after lead author, Jorn Hurum’s daughter. The Messel Pit, where Ida was discovered, meanwhile, was featured in the Guardian’s regular In Praise of… column today.

Ida on the Google HomepageMany reports in the media and in the blogosphere have questioned the use of the term “missing link” to describe this fossil and we addressed this issue in yesterday’s post. Regardless, the fact that the fossil is remarkably complete and well preserved means that it provides important information on the evolution of primates during a time period where little evidence exists.

Moreover, every reader of each of these news articles and blog posts can read the whole PLoS ONE article, including a number of related images and supporting information files, online and for free and can then make up his or her own mind about the fossil. Each article published in PLoS ONE has been peer reviewed; however, the Web 2.0 tools on the PLoS ONE website allow the scientific discussion and debate of these articles long after they have been published. We encourage interested readers to take advantage of the commenting and annotation features on the PLoS ONE journal website to discuss the article online.

Here is a summary of some of the media coverage of the discovery so far (we will be updating this list over the next few days and in subsequent posts):

News:

Blogs:

Audio/Video:

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5 Responses to “Fascinating Ida”

  1. That Shallow Fellow, on May 20th, 2009 at 9:18 am Said:

    Putting Ida Fossil in Perspective, Putting Creationists in their Place…

    Graphic by Mark A. Klinger, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh
    The above painting is one of the better illustrations aimed at laypeople that I’ve come across for getting a sense of what’s at stake in terms of fossil finds like …

  2. Weekly PLoS Blog and Media Round-up « everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog, on May 22nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm Said:

    [...] Fascinating Ida [...]

  3. When Girl Meets Internet « Home Sweet Lab, on May 27th, 2009 at 9:53 am Said:

    [...] outlet I am looking for?  I hope so.  Also, just to warn you, there may be a little bit of OMG SCIENCE IS SO AWESOME time.  You don’t go and try to get a PhD in biology without loving [...]

  4. PLoS ONE Review of 2009 « everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog, on December 22nd, 2009 at 10:19 am Said:

    [...] in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology”. The coverage of this paper was overviewed in three separate blog posts. [...]

  5. PLoS ONE Media Highlights of 2009 « everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog, on December 30th, 2009 at 5:55 am Said:

    [...] and nicknamed “Ida.” We rounded up some of the news and blog coverage of the paper in earlier blog posts and with over 70,000 views of the full scientific article, Ida is still being discussed more [...]

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