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Palaeoblog is a blog giving the latest news about paleontology dinosaur’s paleobiology and related arts and sciences. Tellingly the article wasn’t hooked around Darwinius masillae as a historic scientific breakthrough but rather as a novel ramping up in communication strategy for science

As the NY Times describes today’s media event that unveils the fossilized remains of the monkey like creature Darwinius masillae features a unique collaboration between the History Channel the open access journal PLoS One. Either way someone is going to have to rewrite how physical anthropology. Given what we know about the large number of transitional fossils which have previously been discovered see list of transitional.

The creature named Darwinius masillae by the papers authors lived an estimated 47 million years ago and is the first example of a previously unknown genus of primate. Now across the blogosphere the tag of hype has caught on to. This is an important new fossil a 47 million year old primate nicknamed Ida. The fossil known as Ida is 95 complete and includes. This little creature is going to show us our connection.

It’s always best not to go overboard but the discovery of Darwinius masillae is pretty darn exciting because it represents the most complete fossil primate ever found the skeleton soft body outline and even the stomach contents. We have already posted about Darwinius masillae and apparently so have everyone else in the universe. Sir David Attenborough said Darwin would have been thrilled to have seen the fossil and says it tells us who we are and where we came from.

The specimen is described as Darwinius masillae. Because the skeleton is lightly crushed and bones cannot be handled individually imaging studies are of particular importance. Around the time of Darwinius masillae our missing link was a bipedal species that never went into the trees. Those who did became the apes we know today. She’s a female juvenile who was probably caught in a toxic gas cloud.

Tags: Darwinius masillae, Darwinia maxillae, ida, darwinius, darwinius massilae, ida fossil, darwinia massilia