[LINK] "'Ida' was distant kin, not ancestor: scientists"

[rfmcdonald]

And creationists say that scientists don't admit their errors.

Darwinius masillae, a 47-million-year-old lemur-like creature nicknamed Ida, was dubbed "The Link" in a book and a documentary, but now appears to belong to an extinct fringe branch of the primates that left no living descendants.

Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues examined 360 anatomical features — the jaw and teeth in particular — of 117 species of primate, living and extinct, and compiled a family tree based on those comparisons.

The researchers also described a newly discovered primate called Afradapis, which lived 37 million years ago in the Eocene period. Its fossil remains were found in Egypt.

The tree places Darwinius and Afradapis in a group called the adapoids, which were not ancestors of the living, higher primates, but shared a common ancestor with smaller primates, the lemurs and lorises.

[. . .]

The scientists who unveiled Darwinius said it was not a direct ancestor to humans or monkeys, but could show what an ancestor of apes and humans might have looked like. They said it shared some characteristics with higher primates worth examining.

The new analysis says the adapoids don't belong to the same major grouping of primates as apes, monkeys and humans. The features it shares with higher primates, such as the loss of certain teeth, must have evolved independently, the researchers said.