Teen Talk

July/August 2009

The Amazing Ida
An essay by Joe McDonald

Jorn Hurum, a scientist, could not believe his find. He was buying from a private collector when he spotted the fossil. The owner had found the fossil and kept it for 25 years. The fossil was found in Messel Pit, Germany. The founder had held on to it for 25 years before he found Jorn and sold it to him. Jorn then took it to his lab in Norway. He got a group of handpicked scientists that majored in different areas like the study of primates. They ran a test to see if it was male or female. She was a female. Then they got to serious testing. The first thing they did was find out how old she was. They ran some tests and were amazed to find she was 47.8 million years old! They ran further tests and found out she was less than a year old, but about 6 years-old by human standards. They then named her Ida after Jorn’s 5 year-old daughter. They then studied the little bit of food in her stomach, and found out that her last meal was berries, plants, and seeds. Then Jorn and his team tried to figure out if she was from the lemur class, or the apes/monkeys/humans class.

Everything hung there. If she was from the lemur class, she was not a link for humans. If she was apes/monkeys/humans class, she could be the missing link, and our common ancestor. The scientists sent someone out to check on the Lemur class. Meanwhile, everyone studied her teeth. Her teeth were just like the ones humans and apes have. There were 32 and they were omnivorous. This gave the crew a hint that she was part of the ape class. The crew studied lemurs and Ida together. They were amazed. Ida was the missing link in Darwin’s theory.

Ida is a transition fossil for us. There is a branch shaped like a wishbone with the split end down. On one split end there are lemurs. On the other are apes and humans. At the top where it is not split is Ida. Ida is part lemur, part ape. This means she is our common ancestor and also the lemurs’ common ancestor. Over thousands of years, Ida’s species turned to lemur, or human which made the two classes.

This is a huge discovery, making Darwin’s theory correct. They used a computer to make Ida 3D, so they could see what she looked like. She was indeed like a monkey and a lemur. She had opposable thumbs and feet like apes, while she had a long lemur tail. Ida died because a volcano eruption formed Messel pit. The pit filled with water and grew trees on the steep outside. Ida went down to drink, and the carbon dioxide fumes made her pass out, so she fell, broke her wrist, fell in, and drowned. The water and mud preserved her for millions of years, making it possible for someone to find her. She is more famous than Lucy the ape that learned to walk over many years. She is the missing link. To learn more about Ida, go to the History Channel website, the National Geographic website, or Ida’s own website, revealingthelink.com. There is also a book out, and a DVD which you can get from Amazon, and the History channel website.

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