FOSSIL "IDA" NOT "THE LINK" ONLY A DISTANT RELATIVE

47 MILLION YEAR OLD FOSSIL 'IDA' NOT BELONG IN SAME
PRIMATE CATEGORY AS MONKEYS, APES AND HUMANS

NEW YORK (AP Science) – Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction. In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York. He and his colleagues compared 360 specific anatomical features of 117 living and extinct primate species to draw up a family tree. They report the results in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. Ida is a skeleton of a 47 million-year-old cat-sized creature found in Germany. It starred in a book, "The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor." Ida represents a previously unknown primate species called Darwinius. The scientists who formally announced the finding said they weren't claiming Darwinius was a direct ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans.

The new analysis says Darwinius does not belong in the same primate category as monkeys, apes and humans. Instead, the analysis concluded, it falls into the other major grouping, which includes lemurs. "This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale. He said he'd found the argument of the Darwinius researchers unconvincing, so the new result came as no surprise. In fact, it confirms what most scientists think, said David Begun, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toronto.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Darwin has given the theory of evolution - "Fossilism". Vedānta has given "subjective evolution". In Darwin's theory of objective evolution, matter evolves consciousness. The object exists first, and by its development, life is coming, consciousness is coming - from stone. That is objective evolution. But an object is a relative term; without the subject, an object cannot stand. The subject is the primary substance. Whatever is to be felt is only an idea in the subjective ocean. So, the subject, consciousness is first. The object, the gross, proceeds from the subtle. ... The material scientists think that the subtle proceeds from the gross. This is upside-down. It is just the opposite. Not "fossil-fatherism," but "God-fatherism."

Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Maharaja:
"The Search For Sri Krsna - Chapter 3: Fossilism vs. Subjective Evolution"