The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor [Hardcover]

Colin Tudge (Author), Josh Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2009

For more than a century, scientists have raced to unravel the human family tree and have grappled with its complications. Now, with an astonishing new discovery, everything we thought we knew about primate origins could change. Lying inside a high-security vault, deep within the heart of one of the world’s leading natural history museums, is the scientific find of a lifetime — a perfectly fossilized early primate, older than the previously most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by forty-four million years. A secret until now, the fossil — “Ida” to the researchers who have painstakingly verified her provenance — is the most complete primate fossil ever found. Forty-seven million years old, Ida rewrites what we’ve assumed about the earliest primate origins. Her completeness is unparalleled — so much of what we understand about evolution comes from partial fossils and even single bones, but Ida’s fossilization offers much more than that, from a haunting “skin shadow” to her stomach contents. And, remarkably, knowledge of her discovery and existence almost never saw the light of day. With exclusive access to the first scientists to study her, the award-winning science writer Colin Tudge tells the history of Ida and her place in the world. A magnificent, cutting-edge scientific detective story followed her discovery, and The Link offers a wide-ranging investigation into Ida and our earliest origins. At the same time, it opens a stunningly evocative window into our past and changes what we know about primate evolution and, ultimately, our own.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is an extraordinary fossil." - Sir David Attenborough

"This fossil will probably be the one that will be pictured in all textbooks for the next one hundred years." - Dr. Jørn Hurum, University of Oslo

"When the results of our investigations are published, this will be just like an asteroid hitting the Earth." - Dr. Jens Lorenz Franzen, Senckenberg Research Institute

"A kind of Rosetta stone... it ties together parts we haven't been able to associate before." - Dr. Philip Gingerich, University of Michigan

"The most beautiful fossil primate I've ever seen. In terms of a complete skeleton, it's hard to think of anything else in primate evolution that's as complete as this fossil." - Dr. Holly Smith, University of Michigan

About the Author

  COLIN TUDGE is a biologist by education and a writer by inclination- on biology, food and agriculture, and the philosophy of science. His books include The Tree, Feeding People Is Easy, Consider the Birds, and The Time Before History. For more information about the author, go to www.colintudge.com.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (May 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316070084
• ISBN-13: 978-0316070089
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #960,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yes it's hyped, but the book is well-written, May 21, 2009

By 

Enjolras (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor (Hardcover)

Because this is a book review, I am going to try to avoid merely rehashing criticism regarding the hype surrounding the Darwinius masillae fossil. By now you've already probably heard enough of that. If you want some good blog commentary on Ida, check out Carl Zimmer's blog (feed://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/AN44WKEOJXHKY/rss.xml).

As a popular science book, I enjoyed "The Link." I have read quite a few books about evolution and paleontology at various levels, and thought this one was one of the most clearly written (if not the most scientifically sound). The writing itself is smooth and accessible to a wider audience. The book conveys the right amount of detail for a general audience. I also appreciated the "boyish" enthusiasm the authors conveyed for the Ida fossil. Fossils are exciting, and I'm glad the authors made no effort to hide their enthusiasm. Sometimes, this becomes a problem if the book's enthusiastic claims are not backed up with evidence (which I'll get to later), but overall describing the acquisition of Ida as a "cloak and dagger" operation (in which Hurum must first verify the legality of the fossil) can show - in a dramatic fashion - some of the real challenges paleontologists face when collecting fossils.

I particularly liked the first chapter, which begins with a fictionalized account of Ida's death during the Eocene (approx. 55-33 million years ago) (incidentally, this chapter is free for download on "The Link" website). As much as I appreciate the more technical books discussing fossil analysis or new theories in evolution, at some point I think it is helpful to animate the fossils and show how they might have lived (I think Raptor Red by Bob Bakker was another great attempt at this for Velociraptors). In other chapters, "The Link" also provides interesting background (and beautiful pictures) of other animals in the Eocene. I think this, combined with first episode of BBC's Walking with Prehistoric Beasts (which is also set in the same time and place) gives readers a more complete understanding of Ida's world than a more technical book might.

"The Link" is an enjoyable read and most people will learn a lot about Eocene fauna, but the book falls short in not providing enough evidence to back up its claims regarding primate (and ultimately human) evolution. Basically, the consensus in paleoanthropology seems to be that monkeys and apes descended from Tarsier-like creatures, while Lemurs split off earlier. However, "The Link" (and the scientific publication as well) suggest that monkeys and apes (and hence humans) descended from a Lemur-like creature - namely Ida. As other critics have noted elsewhere, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and "The Link" doesn't provide this. I thought their analysis of primate evolution and the book's overview of the debate was a bit skewered in order to favor their interpretation. The authors may well be right (it's too early to tell), but I urge readers to keep an open and skeptical mind when reading these sections. For those really interested in this debate, I'd also recommend Chris Beard's The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey: Unearthing the Origins of Monkeys, Apes, and Humans, which supports the a separate theory (that there was a third "ghost line" of primates separate from tarsiers and lemurs).

Bottom line: despite the unnecessary hype, this book is well-written and provides enough useful background and food for thought for readers to make it worthwhile. It is definitely geared toward lay readers with little to no scientific background. Hopefully, this will encourage more people to pick up the book and learn about evolution. At the same time, do not treat this book as the final word on primate evolution, but rather as simply another chapter in a fascinating debate.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is borderline fraud..., July 13, 2009

By 

James H. Turnage "jhtlag" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor (Hardcover)

I feel like I've been taken for the price of the book. This may be about a ten page magazine article stretched to 250 pages. How many times can the authors repeat the same facts? Yes, Ida was asphixiated and fell into the lake, Yes, we are lucky to have a complete skeleton, Yes, that is rare in paleontology! Yes, it is 47 millions years old! (Do a search on that.) You can learn all this in the beginning, the end and several places in-between. As for the great writing, we have constructions such as "Each scientist on Harum's team contributed to the study largely in his or her area of expertise" Really? what a good idea.

But the real dishonesty is that we find out on page 239, with 11 pages left (including the acknowledgments) that, uh, we're not really sure after all: "Hurum and his team determined that the lemur-like and anthropoid-likecharacteristics were so primitive that Ida couldn't be conclusively called either one..." that is, it may not be our "grandmother" after all which belies the title "The Link" and many other leading discussions. I've been played.

48 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Purple Prose of Paleo, May 21, 2009

By 

Greg "Saganite" (Brooklyn Park, Mongolia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor (Hardcover)

This book was released to coincide with the onslaught of publicity and exposure generated by some grandstanding scientists and an ignorant (and thus complicit) media, centering on the unveiling of a lemur-like fossil from the Eocene. The fossil (scientifically Darwinius masillae; cutesy marketing name, "Ida") is in amazing shape (stomach contents identifiable, fur outline inferable, juvenile teeth giving way to adult teeth, etc.) and represents an interesting and important find. If we had been allowed to learn about it as we do other fossils--brief splashes of uninformed media blitz followed by puddles of actual information in more serious publications such as Scientific American, Nature, National Geographic and the like--there would be little to complain about and much to celebrate. But the three-ring choreography surrounding this announcement, of which the book is a key element (but probably not as key as the TV show), calls the enterprise into disrepute and inadvertently trivializes what it seeks to elevate.

Some of the book is written in breathless, shades-of-purple prose where events are miracles and everything is unprecedented and amazing. Starting with the very first word of the title--"The"--"Link" seems bent on hyperbole and sensationalism more than it is on scientific elucidation. There is not "the" link. There are a bunch of "a" links, plural, and virtually every fossil is a link in some sense.

Certainly in the very loose sense that the authors of "Link" are using the term, most fossils represent a "link," because it is not even assured, by the book's own admission, that Ida is in a line of direct ancestry with humans. She might be more aunt than mother, if she even deserves THAT designation.

The first part of the book tries to recreate that scene in "Jurassic Park" in which the fat dude from "Seinfeld" makes the deal to put viable dinosaur embryos into a container disguised as a shaving cream can. Sleepless nights, meetings in bars, money changing hands, legal questions.

It wasn't even the phony drama that bugged me (we can tell how the story ended from the photo on the book jacket); it's that I don't even care about any ACTUAL drama surrounding a fossil find. Like in "Raising the Mammoth," I realize that the heroic effort the scientists made to obtain this Ice Age treasure is supposed to be the point, but I can't be bothered. I only really care about the specimen, what it can tell us. And this attitude is at no time more true than when I feel that all that Indiana Jones stuff is being used as mere padding because the book (or film) just doesn't have enough to say about the organism.

But there is a plus side to padding.

Given that there was not a book's worth to say about Ida, several chapters are given over to far more interesting issues related to her time (the very warm Eocene), other organisms that were her contemporaries, and some competing theories about the exact lineage of human ancestry. These chapters are the strongest in "Link," and the closest the book comes to providing additional understanding about evolution and long-ago animals.

As a big fan of science, especially evolutionary biology, with its ability to help us understand so much about ourselves and the world, I am afraid this exercise in tabloid science will blow up on everyone now seeking to profit from it. The result could be that a potential audience, already content to believe goat-herder mythology over fact, will grow ever more cynical about accepting what science has to teach us.

My hope--and it is a slim one--is that the faux enthusiasm in this book, the dabs of genuine information, and the challenge to learn more, might inspire people to learn more about evolution, specifically human evolution. But I suppose that's a bit like hoping that Dan Brown's latest chalice-boiler will inspire people to learn something about church history.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Commentors and folks I talked to over the weekend--centering on the History Channel showing of the brief documentary "The Link" on Memorial Day--have convinced me that I have been too harsh, too elitist, and too dismissive of this book, and that what I was mostly reacting to is the hype around the entire announcement rather than the book itself. Fair points. Several people I much respect have stated that they think this book will promote an understanding of human evolution. I think they might be right. Chapter 3 through 8 in this book, the ones actually written by Tudge, do contain much accurate, interesting information. I still object strongly to some compromises that were made in bringing this discovery to a mass audience, and still contend that it is possible to inform and entertain the public without making such compromises (as people line Sean Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Ken Miller, and Jerry Coyne demonstrate). But I was rash and perhaps unfair in my overall assessment of this book AS A BOOK. So despite some of my critical language above, I hope that anyone looking for a basic, fast-paced introduction to the field of primate (including human) evolution will consider this postscript a qualified recommendation. The positive reviewers are not wrong; there are important things to take away from "The Link."