One might think that the media hype surrounding the publication of a preliminary analysis of the Darwinius massilae fossil would require that the accompanying book (the aforementioned The Link*) be reviewed at length. You would be wrong. For starters, most of this book is filler. They use large type face and an irrelevant narration of evolutionary history to bump this tome up to 250 pages. Fell free to skip pages 37-201 without missing a thing that is relevant to the central thesis of the book, that D. massillae is part of the hominid evolutionary lineage. You can even skip pages 1-37, if you don't think you will be entertained by a breathless description of the research "Dream Team" and the purchasing of the fossil from a private collector. For example, the author** describes lead researcher Jorn Hurum:
He has traveled the world looking for connections between species. At age forty-one, he has the rugged look of an explorer who spends a lot of time in remote areas of the planet. His long hair is pulled over his forehead, and he has a sturdy build. His bright eyes reveal a childlike enthusiasm for his craft that dates from his youth.
Swoon. Gasp. Be still my beating heart.
About all you need to know regarding the seriousness of this text is that all five blurbs on the back cover (universally describing the importance of the D. massillae) are all from individuals either involved in the initial study or the documentary that accompanied the media blitz.
Of course, the idea of a "missing link" is an antiquated relic of old, simplistic evolutionary thought. But, ignoring the quaint origin of this notion, the book's central thesis is that D. massillae (an adapid) is on the human lineage of evolution. In making the argument, the authors present several, possible phylogenies. These phylogenies were based upon morphology. Now, we know that some paleontologists are not fans of this new-fangled DNA sequence method for generating phylogenies. But, let's take a look at what the molecular evidence tells us.
According to the molecular evidence, the lineage leading to both the tarsiers (galago) and the lemurs (mouse lemur, surprisingly enough) branched from the lineage leading to the anthropoids. This suggests that the old classifications (dating back to 1812) of haplorhini and strepsrrhini do not represent monophyletic groups. Neither The Link* nor the paper discuss molecular evidence in a critical manner.
Oh yeah, and their "timeline of major evolutionary events" seems to imply that the dinosaurs were killed off by nuclear weapons.
The Link*, ironically, greatest utility is in its documentation of the blatant and ham handed attempts to promote the fossil and the researchers as celebrities over appropriate scientific interest. When faced with peer review, here is what the conclusions about D. massillae look like:
We do not interpret Darwinius
as anthropoid, but the adapoid primates it represents deserve more
careful comparison with higher primates than they have received in the
past.
Darwinius masillae
is important in being exceptionally well preserved and providing a much
more complete understanding of the paleobiology of an Eocene primate
than was available in the past.
-Hurum et al. (2009), PLoS ONE
*BA BA BA BUM!
