On May 29, 2009, German Paleontologist, Jorn Hurum, discovered a missing link he named Ida, which, he says, bridges the gap between monkeys and apes and their more distant relatives lemurs (the ones who never get invited to Thanksgiving dinner). Flid Flad-Floid is no longer in possession of the fossilized wishbone in question, however, having made a wish on it (that it would, please, please be the missing link!) and completely ruined the evidence. Flid Flad-Floid, PhD, MD, MS, MBA, ASAP, was found wandering around the Mohave desert after his wife kicked him out of their 1975 Winnebago during a heated argument over the alphabet - where he managed to trip over the fossilized wishbone of what he believed to be that of a child who was neither human nor ape, fish nor fowl - but something inbetween!ĭr. The story usually goes something like this:ĭistinguished Professor of Anthropology, Dr. So just what is the missing link and why is it missing?Īs far as I can ascertain, the missing link is the telltale piece of evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that mankind evolved from apes.Īpparently the fact that many of us eat bananas for every meal and have hair in lots and lots of unwanted places doesn’t mean diddly squat to Professional Missing Link Hunter-ists.Įvery once in a while an overzealous anthropologist operating under the influence of too many Tootsie Roll Pops claims to have found the missing link. Over the next 25 years the two men would recover hundreds of fossils.Hello Dear Readers! Today we are going to talk about the missing link!Īs you may or may not know, scientists, archeologists, anthropologists and other groups whose professions end in “ist” have been searching for the missing link for– what seems like to you and me - thousands and thousands of years, but for them only seems like about 3 days because they are having so much fun!īut apparently, the missing link is still hiding in the last place they have yet to look! It was not until 18 long months later that the first fossil human scraps were recovered. Importantly, these tools were associated with fossils of more advanced species of our own genus, Homo.Īfter 10 years of inactivity at Sterkfontein, anatomist Phillip Tobias and his assistant Alun Hughes initiated systematic excavations at Sterkfontein in November 1966. Brain, a geology student who also recognized primitive stone tools in these new sediments. Other findings quickly accrued, including a partial skeleton, the anatomy of which showed that although small-brained and apelike in many ways, the ape-men of nearly 3-million-years-ago were also upright, two-legged walkers, similar to modern humans.īy 1956, younger deposits were discovered at Sterkfontein by C.K. Within three weeks, Broom and Robinson were rewarded with the recovery of an ape-man skull, nicknamed Mrs. In 1947, eight years after the end of the lime mining, Broom returned to Sterkfontein with zoologist John Robinson, searching strictly for fossils. Now called the “Cradle of Humankind,” the rolling hills between Johannesburg and Pretoria have since advanced our knowledge far beyond Broom’s initial revelation and continue to further academic knowledge to this day. The fossils began to suggest that Africa was the ancestral homeland of our lineage, and not Europe or Asia as was previously believed. Due to its developmentally young age, the scientific community had been reluctant to embrace the fossil as a legitimate human ancestor, because the bones of juvenile apes and humans look more alike than their adult counterparts.Įighty years ago, on September 19, 1936, Broom published his findings, which would reshape our knowledge of our earliest ancestors. He soon located much of the cranium as well as many of its associated teeth and determined the pieces represented a fossil human called an ape-man.Īt the time, the only other example of an ape-man was the “Taung Child” skull. It was of modest size, but was certainly bigger than that of a monkey or other animal whose fossils were commonly found in the caves of the area.
On Broom’s third visit to Sterkfontein, the quarry’s manager George Barlow presented him with a lump of calcified sediment in the shape of a brain, complete with convolutions and venous patterns.
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