num_pages: 262
description: 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 worlds 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 weve 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 Idas 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.
language: English
title: The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor
publisher: Little, Brown & Company