Ida Idea

Interesting details have been revealed in the media release at the American Museum of Natural History about an amazingly complete, 47 million year old fossil female primate (dubbed 'Ida' but named scientifically as Darwinius masillae) from the Messel pit near Darmstadt in Germany (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/may/19/ida-fossil-missing-link). The lemur-like animal actually appears, because of its lack of a grooming claw on the foot and the shape of her ankle bone, to be on the taxonomic branch leading to monkeys, apes and humans. The fossil is so detailed that one can make out the fur and even the leaves and seeds of her last meal. Such fossil primates are very rare (primates, because of where and how they live, don't lend themselves to fossilisation) but the Messel pit is on the site of a volcanic lake in the middle of a sub-tropical jungle. Ida is an extremely important find (and the name is timely, given Darwin's 200th anniversary) but apparently she spent more than 20 years in a private collection before being offered for $1m to Norwegian palaeontologist Jorn Hurum in a Hamburg vodka bar. Hurum apparently took a great risk in buying the fossil (there are many fakes and manipulations) but the whole thing seems to have worked out well. I wonder, however, how many times such items are lost to science.