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For two years,

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a team of top scientists have been
secretly studying a unique fossil.

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This fossil
will probably be the one

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that will be pictured in all
text books for the next 100 years.

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They believe it could be one of
our earliest primate ancestors.

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Well, it's really a kind of Rosetta
Stone because it ties together

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parts we haven't been able
to associate before.

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Have they found our oldest,
complete, primate ancestor?

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The fossil has more information in it
then in any fossil I've ever seen.

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Their research has
stunned the world.

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In the moment when the results of
our investigations will be

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published, this will be just
like an asteroid hitting the earth.

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47 million years ago the dinosaurs
were already long extinct.

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It's the time when
the blueprints for modern mammals
were being established.

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Dense, tropical rainforests
cover the earth.

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They're home to small primates.

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Among them is an ancestor to us all.

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For almost 200 years,
scientists have searched

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for links to our prehistoric past.

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The search has concentrated
in East Africa,

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known as the cradle of mankind.

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Here in the 1970s, they found
the link between apes and man.

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It offered conclusive proof
that we started walking upright
3.2 million years ago.

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A human ancestor, a female, Lucy.

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Then in 1984,
the remains of a boy were found.

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Material evidence that 1.5 million
years ago, humans had already

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lost their hair and taken their
first steps onto the open savannah.

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Scientists have long hoped that
the earth might eventually yield

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an even more ancient fossil
that links apes, man

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and all the other primates
to the earliest mammals on earth.

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This could be it.

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A fossil so ancient it could shine
a light deeper into our history
than ever before.

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And so detailed it could help
science reveal the origins
of every person on the planet.

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This fossil is so complete.

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Everything's there. It's unheard of
in the primate fossil record at all.

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You have to get to human burial to
see something that's this complete.

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This is really, really the most
complete fossil primate ever.

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World-renowned fossil expert
Dr Jorn Hurum of Oslo University

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has spent his life scouring
the earth for important fossils.

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But the most incredible
specimen of them all,

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the one that would change his life,
took him totally by surprise.

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It was in December 2006
at the annual Hamburg Fossil Fair.

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Here the tables were laden
with beautiful examples

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of fossils and minerals
to catch the public eye.

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But Jorn didn't expect to find
something for his museum on a stall.

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The best specimens are
never shown on a show.

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They are always what we call
"under the table".

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So you need to know the dealers

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to be shown the really,
really, really good things.

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The dealer, Thomas Perner,
promised an extraordinary find.

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When the dealer told me
in the middle of the day

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at a mineral show in Hamburg that
I should join him for a drink

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because he wanted
to show me something,

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I knew that it was something special.

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Then he showed me some photographs
and I was completely stunned.

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And I didn't sleep for two nights
after that,

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because I knew that what I'd seen,
it was probably

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the most beautiful fossil I was
ever going to see in my whole life.

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Jorn made a home video
of the very first moment

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he came face to face
with the fossil.

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THEY LAUGH

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Oh!

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This is the best fossil
and rarest fossil worldwide.

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Wow!

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Oh!

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It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

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Complete foot and two complete hands.

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Yeah.

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OK. Wow!

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Yes!

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Jorn believed he had stumbled across
a 47-million-year-old treasure -

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the perfectly preserved skeleton
of a small creature,

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more complete
than he could ever hope for.

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But his joy may be short-lived.

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International fossil dealing
is a cut-throat business.

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Jorn must act swiftly
if he wants to save it for science.

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The thing about important fossils,
there's a big black market and

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there's a lot of private collectors,
like with art and other things.

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So a lot of important specimens are
still locked in the basement of some
rich guy or something like that.

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So it needs to be in
a public museum to be studied.

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The asking price is over 1 million.

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Jorn's got to be certain it's
a genuine fossil and not a forgery.

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He has it scientifically examined.

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You can fake an outer surface
of bone that looks really real,

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but you cannot fake
the inner structure of a bone.

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It's impossible.

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So getting an X-ray, you can
see the inside of the bone.

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You can see actually
the bone marrow inside.

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We know that it's 100% a real fossil.

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There is no doubt at all.

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The X-rays prove this fossil
is genuine.

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The necessary funds were secured
and Jorn shipped it home.

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In Norway's capital city,
Oslo, in his museum lab,

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Jorn finally gets to properly
investigate his new treasure.

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This is so complete that you cannot,
even in your dreams,

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wish for something being 47 million
years old and this complete.

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Usually, we only find teeth,
broken parts of jaws

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and small bones from the middle foot,
maybe some toes and so on.

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Just single, small bones
from these animals this long ago.

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Astonishingly,
this fossil is not just bone.

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Its level of preservation
is extraordinary.

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Here's an imprint of the bacteria
that grew on the fur.

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So actually we can see
how much fur was there.

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You cannot see the muscles
or anything like that,

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but you can see
an outline of the body

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that's bigger than just a skeleton.

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You can actually see where
the fur covered the animal

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and how thick the fur was.

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This unique fossil is so detailed

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that it immediately reveals
important information to Jorn.

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The first thing I recognised was
the big toe standing up like this,

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90 degrees to the rest of the foot.

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And if you look very careful,
to both the fingers and the toes,

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you can see that there were
nails and not claws.

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This is a primate, just from
seeing that image of that foot.

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It was really a wake-up call for me.

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Apes, monkeys and us all belong to
one particular group of mammals,

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the primates.

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And the common feature we all share

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is four fingers
and an opposable thumb -

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the characteristic we share with
this 47-million-year-old fossil. 

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Could we be related?

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Looking at the hand, you can see that
it's got five fingers, of course,

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and nails on all the fingers. But
also the thumb is opposable like us,

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so it can grasp things, it can hold
things the same way we do today.

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It's already there
47 million years ago.

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It's a proper hand
to hold around things.

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To properly analyse the fossil,
Jorn must share his secret.

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He handpicks a small team
of experts,

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each a world leader
in their discipline.

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I knew immediately that
this fossil was too important.

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So I started to invite people
in to make a dream team

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around this fossil, to make
the first description really proper.

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If I would do it alone,
I'm not an expert in primates,

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but there are some good people
around the world

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and I invited the best ones to
join me and they all said yes.

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Dr Holly Smith
is a dental anthropologist.

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By studying the fossil's teeth,
she will be able to determine

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what the creature ate, its age and
how it compares to other primates.

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The fossil could be the ancestor

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of prosimians and apes and monkeys
and the lineage leading up to man.

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Joining the team is Dr Jens Franzen,
a renowned fossil expert

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who's been waiting for
an opportunity such as this.

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This is by far the most complete

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fossil primate
ever found on the world.

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And we have not only
the complete skeleton,

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but we have also
the complete soft body outline

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and we have the gut content.
So what do you want more, ja?

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Hi! It's nice to see you.
How was the flight?

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Professor Philip Gingerich
is the next on board.

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He's spent his life
searching for links between
early and modern mammals.

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I suppose one of my initial
thoughts was,

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"This is a big job.
This will be a lot of work."

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Partly because there isn't
anything else like it

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and so it really deserves
to be compared carefully

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with all the various
fragmentary fossils we have

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and also with the skeletons
of the living ones.

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And you put all that together,
that's a big work.

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They plan a long
and thorough study.

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They must be certain of
their conclusions

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before they reveal
the fossil to the world.

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Until then, they will work in secret
on their extraordinary treasure.

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As soon as they start
their analysis,

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the fossil begins to
come to life before their eyes.

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The pelvic region, of course,

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it's possible actually to
tell the sex from this area.

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In this region, you will expect
to see a baculum or not.

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All primates at that time possessed
a penis bone, known as a baculum.

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We now know from
looking at the specimen

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that there's no baculum present.

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So this is a girl,

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this is a small female
that lived 47 million years ago.

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The investigation is gathering pace.

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The next question is
where does she come from?

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And it's the way her delicate
body has been preserved,

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and not her skeleton,
that provides the answers.

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There's only one locality in the
world where this transfer technique,

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that the fossils are put in
this kind of polyester,

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that all the fossils are prepared
like this. This is the only place.

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All the major primate fossil finds
until now have been made in Africa.

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But this one has been prepared
using resin,

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a technique used, not in Africa,
but in Germany.

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The fossil was found here,
in a place known as the Messel Pit.

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There is nowhere
in the world like it.

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It's an ancient crater filled
with an unrivalled collection

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of fossils, all dating from the
Eocene Period, 47 million years ago.

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It's like a peek-hole
into a whole community,

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a whole ecosystem in the Eocene.

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That suddenly you see that
everything you find usually

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as small pieces of things,
you have complete

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in this one locality,
one place in the world

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and that's something
that palaeontologists
really, really treasure.

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So this is like a holy grail
for palaeontology.

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Dinosaurs were long extinct.

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The shales of Messel had
already yielded fossil birds,

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reptiles and amphibians,

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complete with the impression of
their feathers, scales and skin.

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The biggest ants ever known

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and beetles, still with their
colour after millions of years.

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Preserved in incredible detail
are bats,

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snakes and even a miniature horse
the size of a small dog.

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The first glimpses of kinds of
creatures that are alive today.

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The Eocene Period is really the
critical stage for mammal evolution.

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It's when all the old-timers,
they are still around

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and the newcomers are coming
strongly into the field.

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We have the first horses,
the first carnivores,

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the first bats, the first whales.
All these new mammals are evolving

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in the Eocene and, of course,
the primates, they are thriving.

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But which were our ancestors?

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Until now, no complete primate has
ever been found in the Messel Pit,

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and even this specimen
was almost lost forever.

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Fossil hunters have dug in
the Messel Pit for generations,

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collecting and selling
the specimens as works of art,

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just such a fossil hunter must have
dug this primate from the shale.

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Who this was is still a mystery,
but we do know they took her away,

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perfectly preserved her in resin

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and locked her away from view
for 25 years.

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It's like having your
unknown Rembrandt,

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your unknown Van Gogh, at home.

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You can see it every day. The rest
of the world don't know about it.

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And it makes you kind of
feel powerful I think
to have something like that.

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Fortunately, now she's with Jorn,

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her secrets can be revealed
to the world and the team in Oslo

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are starting to examine and
describe her skeleton bone by bone.

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By why are fossils from the
Messel Pit so well preserved?

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It's thanks to the formation of
the Messel Pit 50 million years ago.

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Deep underground, molten rock,
magma, forced its way upwards.

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Just below the surface,
it meant a layer of ground water.

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Superheated steam generated
incredible pressure.

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The rock was ripped apart.

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A series of massive explosions

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created a crater a mile wide.

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Inside its steep walls,
an incredibly deep lake formed.

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It was probably at least 100m deep
and the waters were still.

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When animals fell in,

236
00:19:21,840 --> 00:19:26,440
they drifted down and were soon
covered by mud at the bottom.

237
00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:31,000
There was no oxygen
and few bacteria to induce decay.

238
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,600
Undisturbed for millions of years,

239
00:19:33,600 --> 00:19:37,880
the bodies, buried under tonnes
of mud, were squashed flat.

240
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:47,440
It is the Messel Pit's
extraordinary geological history

241
00:19:47,440 --> 00:19:52,120
that allows Jorn to pinpoint
exactly when this fossil lived.

242
00:19:57,840 --> 00:20:02,160
The start of this whole lake,
where the fossil was found,

243
00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:07,280
that was a volcanic explosion,
and parts of that volcanics

244
00:20:07,280 --> 00:20:11,120
that came out in the explosion,
they are like time capsules.

245
00:20:11,120 --> 00:20:16,080
And it's possible to date
the radioactive isotopes

246
00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:20,560
in such volcanic rocks
very, very precisely.

247
00:20:20,560 --> 00:20:25,240
And this has been done for this
volcanics and it's 47 million years.

248
00:20:27,800 --> 00:20:32,440
Despite the millions of years
that have passed since
these animals were alive,

249
00:20:32,440 --> 00:20:35,000
their bodies have been preserved
in such detail

250
00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:37,920
that they give us
a full picture of their world.

251
00:20:40,360 --> 00:20:44,560
The preservation at Messel really
brings things to life and you can

252
00:20:44,560 --> 00:20:50,000
really get a feel for this as an
animal and not just as something...

253
00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:51,840
A pile of bones, long dead.

254
00:20:53,000 --> 00:20:56,840
Eocene Europe was very
different than it is today.

255
00:20:56,840 --> 00:21:01,360
Continents have drifted,
sea levels changed.

256
00:21:01,360 --> 00:21:06,040
Then the world's climate
was more humid and tropical.

257
00:21:08,840 --> 00:21:14,960
The primates' home around the lake
was a lush, tropical rainforest,

258
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:20,120
a green canopy of trees stretched
as far as the eye could see.

259
00:21:20,120 --> 00:21:23,720
In the skies were birds and bats.

260
00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:30,960
On the ground,

261
00:21:30,960 --> 00:21:34,840
new kinds of furry, warm-blooded
creatures were flourishing,

262
00:21:34,840 --> 00:21:36,480
the early mammals.

263
00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:41,240
This is where our fossil lived out
her life as a prehistoric primate.

264
00:21:46,640 --> 00:21:52,120
She lived in a dense jungle
of tall trees and vines.

265
00:21:53,640 --> 00:21:56,720
As the team continue
to examine her skeleton,

266
00:21:56,720 --> 00:21:59,200
they're able
to deduce how she lived.

267
00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:05,080
All through looking at the skeleton,
we can be for sure

268
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,840
that it was living on trees because
when you are looking at the thumb

269
00:22:09,840 --> 00:22:13,760
and also at the big toe
of the feet,

270
00:22:13,760 --> 00:22:19,440
you can see that these were
grasping hands and grasping feet.

271
00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:24,920
So these were feet constructed for

272
00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:28,880
an animal living on trees,
evidently, ja. No doubt about that.

273
00:22:34,240 --> 00:22:38,280
It's possible to say something
about the size of the muscles

274
00:22:38,280 --> 00:22:41,080
from the attachment points
on the bones.

275
00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:45,360
What's special about this small
skeleton is really that both

276
00:22:45,360 --> 00:22:51,120
the arms and legs are quite short and
quite strong for such a small animal.

277
00:22:51,120 --> 00:22:55,120
So probably she had
quite a lot of muscles.

278
00:22:59,320 --> 00:23:04,200
This new information adds to
the picture the team are building

279
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:10,840
of a strong, muscular creature
living high in the tree tops
of the Eocene rainforest.

280
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:22,600
But what did she eat?

281
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:35,760
To understand
precisely what she ate,

282
00:23:35,760 --> 00:23:38,800
the team look at her teeth.

283
00:23:47,040 --> 00:23:53,560
Dr Holly Smith is an internationally
renowned dental anthropologist.

284
00:23:53,560 --> 00:23:57,200
She wants to see inside
the fossil's mouth,

285
00:23:57,200 --> 00:24:00,640
but it's been firmly shut
for 47 million years.

286
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:03,680
Only detailed X-rays
have enabled her

287
00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:07,400
to examine the shape and structure
of the fossil's teeth.

288
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:13,800
So the Messel primate has a nice,
kind of general primate dentition

289
00:24:13,800 --> 00:24:15,960
that could do a little of everything.

290
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:19,200
She's got a little bit
of an incising surface.

291
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:22,920
She's going to have plenty
of piercing teeth.

292
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:27,000
She has molars that are general
but have some kind of slicing edges.

293
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:31,880
And we would expect that a real
primate, a real arboreal primate,

294
00:24:31,880 --> 00:24:34,240
would be eating probably
fruit and leaves

295
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:36,720
and maybe supplementing that
with insects.

296
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:44,200
This extraordinary preservation
is not restricted to her teeth.

297
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:47,480
As well as the fur,
there are other delicate details

298
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:52,800
that provide information which
never ceases to astonish them.

299
00:24:52,800 --> 00:24:56,600
What's amazing about this specimen
is also that

300
00:24:56,600 --> 00:24:59,000
we can actually see its gut contents.

301
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:03,280
It's the last meal preserved
in this small female.

302
00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,760
Even with this nugget
of petrified treasure,

303
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:10,480
decoding the fossil's secrets
doesn't come easy.

304
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,160
But Jens manages to puzzle it out.

305
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:20,320
Before I had seen that several
times and I thought all the time,

306
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:24,040
"Oh, that's a scale of a fish
quite common in Messel."

307
00:25:24,040 --> 00:25:27,000
And then I saw the cell structure

308
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:32,680
and I realised, "Oh, no! This must
be the remnant of a plant."

309
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:38,080
And then looking at the morphometry
and at the form of that particle,

310
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:43,920
it became immediately clear that
this can only be a seed, ja.

311
00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,600
So it seems that
just before she died,

312
00:25:50,600 --> 00:25:55,440
this tree-dwelling primate fed
on fruits, seeds and leaves.

313
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,800
As the team examined
the X-rays in more detail,

314
00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:04,120
something just isn't adding up.

315
00:26:04,120 --> 00:26:06,680
They've realised that her jaw held

316
00:26:06,680 --> 00:26:10,240
an extraordinarily large
number of teeth.

317
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:18,800
This is the radiograph
from this side and you see

318
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,760
the drawing of the teeth
matches pretty well.

319
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:26,280
The team have a real puzzle
on their hands.

320
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:30,520
They're going to need more than
a standard X-ray to solve it.

321
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:34,880
The Senckenberg Institute in Germany

322
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:39,400
specialises in high-end
computer tomography, CT scanning.

323
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:43,440
Images of the rotating fossil
are recorded and manipulated

324
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:48,920
by powerful computers, which,
just like a CAT scan in a hospital,

325
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,560
create an image
of the fossil's jaw in 3-D.

326
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:55,760
Then we've taken X-rays
and so you can get

327
00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:58,720
the shadows of what's behind
what you can see.

328
00:26:58,720 --> 00:27:02,760
And then in the last year,
we've done computerised tomography,

329
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,640
where you literally...
you project X-rays

330
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:10,880
in a way that literally slices the
fossil into many, many, many slices

331
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,200
and made into
a three-dimensional image,

332
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:17,600
so you can literally step through
from the front to the back.

333
00:27:17,600 --> 00:27:21,280
You can even manipulate
the CT scan so that you see

334
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:24,720
what you're looking at, not from
the front, but from the back.

335
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:27,440
It's as if there are no secrets.

336
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:32,040
The best person to help analyse
such phenomenally detailed

337
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:35,640
three-dimensional images
is the scanner supervisor

338
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:37,440
Dr Jorg Habersetzer.

339
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,640
Here is the region of the molars.

340
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:48,080
And if we zoom in,
which is not possible on normal CTs,

341
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:52,120
we see all the details preserved
in three dimensions.

342
00:27:52,120 --> 00:27:54,920
So we can follow up all ridges

343
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:59,480
and the cusp of the teeth
in a three-dimensional way.

344
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:06,400
This computer tomography has
revealed something extraordinary.

345
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,760
You can also see,
for example on this assemblage,

346
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:18,720
that the second molar here
has not evolved complete roots,

347
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:25,760
whereas in the first molar we have
here already very solid roots.

348
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:30,920
Here is the answer to why they found
so many teeth in the fossil's mouth.

349
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:39,520
She has her baby teeth as well
as her unerupted adult's teeth

350
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,440
still buried in her jaw.

351
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:44,920
This primate was a youngster.

352
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:54,040
So this Messel primate was caught
at a really interesting

353
00:28:54,040 --> 00:28:56,200
and very distinctive
time in her life.

354
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:00,480
She's clearly no longer an infant,

355
00:29:00,480 --> 00:29:02,440
but she's not grown up.

356
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:07,800
She's a juvenile. She might be,
let's say, very roughly comparable

357
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:12,280
to something in a human like a child
somewhere between six and 12.

358
00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:23,640
It was a girl, a small girl,
which had this tragic end

359
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:28,760
there in the crater lake of Messel
47 million years ago, ja.

360
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:32,800
She's in a developmental phase
that looks very much like

361
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:36,040
a six-year-old human in comparison

362
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:40,000
and I'm so lucky that I have
a daughter that's five-years-old

363
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,520
and she's starting
to shed her teeth just now.

364
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:46,880
So we decided, after some discussion,

365
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:51,840
to name the fossil, to name this
wonderful little primate, Ida,

366
00:29:51,840 --> 00:29:54,320
because that's the name
of my daughter.

367
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:55,600
LITTLE GIRL LAUGHS

368
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:03,320
So Jorn now has
two Idas in his life.

369
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:07,680
One five-years-old
and one 47 million.

370
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:15,120
At this point in the investigation,
they've gathered so much information

371
00:30:15,120 --> 00:30:18,960
that it's possible to fully
reconstruct her ancient skeleton.

372
00:30:23,520 --> 00:30:27,040
Her 47-million-year-old remains

373
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:32,960
can be brought to life
in the 21st-century virtual world.

374
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,200
Laser scanners, combined with
the computerised tomography,

375
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:43,600
produce a digital code of her body,

376
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:47,760
which, once processed, creates
an accurate 3-D model.

377
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:56,720
We are able, using these tools,
to see Ida as never before.

378
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:08,480
Ida is a warm-blooded creature
covered in thick fur.

379
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:12,480
She was just under a metre long,
including her tail,

380
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:15,720
which she used for balance
as she scampered on all fours

381
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:17,880
through the rainforest canopy.

382
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:22,400
Her opposable thumbs and toes
gripped the branches.

383
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,280
Ida was probably active at night.

384
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:28,120
Like us, her two large,
forward-facing eyes

385
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:31,240
gave her excellent
stereoscopic vision.

386
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:55,680
The team's extensive analysis,
combined with X-rays and CT scans,

387
00:31:55,680 --> 00:32:00,520
have brought them a long way
in understanding Ida.

388
00:32:00,520 --> 00:32:03,040
The investigation
is however far from over.

389
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:05,440
There are still many
questions to answer.

390
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:10,920
Most importantly,

391
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:15,720
how significant is she to our
understanding of our evolution?

392
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:20,280
Does she belong on the evolutionary
branch that leads to us?

393
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:34,040
The Eocene Period in which she lived

394
00:32:34,040 --> 00:32:38,200
was a crucial time
in the history of life.

395
00:32:38,200 --> 00:32:42,800
Without the developments that
happened, we would not exist now.

396
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,600
At some point during this new dawn,

397
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:49,200
the primates split into
two major groups.

398
00:32:51,360 --> 00:32:55,480
The prosimians,
the non-human branch,

399
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:59,320
which still survive
mainly as modern lemurs.

400
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:06,360
The other branch, the anthropoids,

401
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:09,520
developed into monkeys, apes

402
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:13,840
and, ultimately, us, humans.

403
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:24,280
Well, the advance of having
a skeleton this complete

404
00:33:24,280 --> 00:33:28,280
is hopefully it will let us make
the connection to what came later.

405
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:32,200
In a sense, studying
primate evolution is all about

406
00:33:32,200 --> 00:33:38,600
looking at the diversity living today
and tracing that back through time.

407
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,040
We're interested here to see how
apes and monkeys trace back.

408
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:43,560
How lemurs trace back.

409
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:48,920
And which of these, or all of them,
can we find in the Eocene.

410
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,440
But what is Ida?

411
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:57,600
Is she our ancestor or is she
on the non-human line, a lemur?

412
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:01,200
Any partial primate remains
discovered at Messel so far

413
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,480
have been described as lemurs.

414
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:08,280
The first guess, of course, because
of the other specimens that's found

415
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,880
from the Messel locality is to say,
"OK, this is a primitive lemur."

416
00:34:13,680 --> 00:34:16,360
Most lemurs are the size of monkeys

417
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,680
and have similar habits
and lifestyles.

418
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,200
But they are an evolutionary
side branch.

419
00:34:22,200 --> 00:34:26,440
They've hardly changed fundamentally
in 47 million years.

420
00:34:32,440 --> 00:34:36,040
If Ida is closely related
to modern lemurs,

421
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:39,040
then she cannot be
a human ancestor.

422
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:43,360
It's a critical stage
of the investigation.

423
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:47,600
It's really important to compare
this fossil to living lemurs

424
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:52,600
because living lemurs have
many not so advanced traits.

425
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,280
And a lot of the traits
that we see in lemurs today

426
00:34:55,280 --> 00:35:00,360
is the same things that we should
look for in the Eocene,

427
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:02,960
when all primates
were really primitive.

428
00:35:11,720 --> 00:35:18,320
Dental expert Dr Holly Smith is at
Duke Lemur Centre in North Carolina.

429
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:24,920
This is the world's largest research
centre for the non-human line

430
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:28,800
of primates and here
they have a great variety of them,

431
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,560
including tarsiers,
loris and lemurs.

432
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:39,360
Is there one that is
particularly similar to Ida?

433
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:48,120
The Messel primate isn't
exactly like anything living

434
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:53,160
and one of the questions is,
is it general enough

435
00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:58,280
to have been a possible ancestor
for the higher primates,

436
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,560
the apes and monkeys
and perhaps these animals, too?

437
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:08,400
Or was it already specially
off on a line to lemurs?

438
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:13,160
But if you want to study one of
these creatures, there's a problem.

439
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:15,760
Getting it to keep still.

440
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:24,440
Fortunately, this loris is
being examined under sedation
by the centre's vet.

441
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:31,400
And we're doing a physical exam, his
annual physical exam, under sedation.

442
00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:39,400
By having a really close look
at this animal,

443
00:36:39,400 --> 00:36:44,200
we can see characteristics that
proves it is not our close relative.

444
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:56,200
Most of their toes have toenails
like we would have,

445
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:01,240
but this second digit
has a long grooming claw.

446
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:07,080
All lower primates have such a
grooming claw on the hind foot.

447
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:17,080
They can use that
for grooming their fur

448
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:21,440
and you can see a primate's got
a really lush, thick coat of fur

449
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,560
and keeping that in condition
is important.

450
00:37:25,600 --> 00:37:29,000
The vet continues by checking
this creature's teeth,

451
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,400
Holly's particular expertise.

452
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,600
He reveals another
important characteristic

453
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:39,040
that places it on
the non-human branch of evolution.

454
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:45,560
So he has the upper incisors here,
the canines, and then on the bottom,

455
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:49,280
his incisors and canines
form this tooth comb.

456
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:55,560
These animals have unusual
front teeth in their lower jaw.

457
00:37:55,560 --> 00:38:00,920
Where we and apes and monkeys
have separate front teeth,

458
00:38:00,920 --> 00:38:04,160
these creatures have a tooth comb.

459
00:38:05,680 --> 00:38:11,280
Some of the lemur's specialisation
is used for getting food,

460
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,920
but it's also used for grooming fur
and grooming each other.

461
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:19,840
The big question for
Jorn and the team is,

462
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:23,400
does Ida belong with them
or with us?

463
00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:27,320
Does she have the grooming claw
and a tooth comb?

464
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,880
So looking at this toe here,

465
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,520
certainly, it's just
as wide as the others.

466
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:41,440
There's not a pointy toe tip,

467
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:45,920
like you expect in lemurs when
there's a toilet claw present.

468
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:47,600
There's nothing like this here.

469
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:49,640
This is also nail-bearing.

470
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:56,120
One of the other main lemur traits
is, of course, a tooth comb.

471
00:38:56,120 --> 00:39:00,000
And we would expect this, of course,
in the front of the snout

472
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:02,000
and there's no tooth comb
here at all.

473
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,120
There's nothing like that
in this specimen.

474
00:39:06,160 --> 00:39:10,480
Ida's skeleton is over
95% complete, so the team know

475
00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:14,600
that these features haven't been
lost in collection or preparation.

476
00:39:16,400 --> 00:39:19,800
Put simply,
she never possessed them.

477
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:26,200
Unlike the other fossils found
in the ancient Messel Pit,

478
00:39:26,200 --> 00:39:28,360
she is not a lemur.

479
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:32,080
She must be a member
of another group.

480
00:39:32,080 --> 00:39:36,000
Could she be in a group
connected to us?

481
00:39:38,200 --> 00:39:41,080
In the beginning,
we all thought

482
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:46,080
we are just dealing with
a certain kind of fossil lemur

483
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:49,200
and, step by step, our ideas changed

484
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:53,560
and more and more anthropoid traits

485
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:58,840
turned up and now we are
really thinking of relationships

486
00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:05,560
to anthropoids, to hominoids
finally and at the end to man.

487
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:12,240
The team have shown that Ida is
not on the lemur line of evolution.

488
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,080
But is she on the human line?

489
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:30,000
Jorn and the team want to look
to the forests of East Africa

490
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:33,360
and our closest relative,
the chimpanzee.

491
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:41,720
If we look at the anthropoid
primates, we have to go to Africa

492
00:40:41,720 --> 00:40:45,080
to look at chimpanzees to see
something that's more advanced,

493
00:40:45,080 --> 00:40:51,000
more specialised, in a way that's
a little bit more like human traits.

494
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:54,680
It's wonderful.
You can compare them

495
00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,680
and you can compare their
skeletal features with Ida.

496
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:06,320
Ida shares the classic primate
characteristics with chimps.

497
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:07,920
They are quadrupeds,

498
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:13,120
walking on all fours, as she would
have done in the ancient forest.

499
00:41:13,120 --> 00:41:17,160
Strikingly, their hands and feet
are almost identical -

500
00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:20,000
five fingers and five toes.

501
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:25,440
And her opposable big toe, the trait
that first identified her to Jorn

502
00:41:25,440 --> 00:41:28,320
as a primate,
is mirrored in the chimpanzees.

503
00:41:30,040 --> 00:41:34,880
It enables both of them
to grasp tree branches and climb.

504
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:38,720
Looking at modern-day chimpanzees

505
00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:41,480
and looking at
the foot of a chimpanzee

506
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,360
and looking at
especially the ankle bones,

507
00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:47,280
they are so much
the same as in the fossil.

508
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:51,240
At this stage of the investigation,

509
00:41:51,240 --> 00:41:56,200
Ida is showing some basic human-like
characteristics in her skeleton,

510
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:59,760
but her body proportions
and the length of her fingers

511
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,120
are nonetheless lemur-like.

512
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:04,600
The picture is still unclear.

513
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:08,360
It is, broadly speaking,
a lemur monkey.

514
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:13,400
How lemur it is and how monkey it is,
is what we're trying to figure out.

515
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:16,120
And so...

516
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:19,360
it looks to me like it ties

517
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,120
higher primates, apes and monkeys,

518
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:26,840
into something in the Eocene
that's clearly more primitive.

519
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:46,400
The team are looking for any
clear evidence in Ida's anatomy
that links her to us.

520
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:48,280
This is not an easy task.

521
00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:51,280
Establishing these links
has always been a problem

522
00:42:51,280 --> 00:42:54,520
since the theory of evolution
was first proposed.

523
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:05,240
150 years ago, Charles Darwin
explained the incredible diversity

524
00:43:05,240 --> 00:43:08,120
of life on earth in a new way.

525
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:15,360
There are billions of species
on the planet,

526
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:20,000
but each was not individually
and uniquely created.

527
00:43:20,000 --> 00:43:24,960
New species appeared as they
adapted to a changing environment.

528
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:34,600
At the time,
Darwin's proposal was controversial.

529
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:43,160
He argued that monkeys, apes and
ourselves have a common ancestor.

530
00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:45,560
That ancestor, we now know,

531
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:49,320
must have lived hundreds
of millions of years ago.

532
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:04,040
Darwin's idea was revolutionary

533
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:08,280
and he was ridiculed by many
in Victorian society.

534
00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:11,520
"Where is the proof?"
his critics demanded.

535
00:44:11,520 --> 00:44:14,880
"Where is the half ape,
half man fossil

536
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,120
"that links us to
ape-like ancestors?

537
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:21,400
"And where is the even
more ancient fossil

538
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:25,840
"that links apes and ourselves
to the rest of the animal kingdom?"

539
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:30,880
Darwin predicted that such creatures
must have existed,

540
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:33,800
but he never could produce
the fossil evidence.

541
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:35,320
It was missing.

542
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:49,440
Don Johanson is famous
as the man who found

543
00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:54,080
what the world had been waiting for,
one of those missing links.

544
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:58,880
In the Ethiopian desert
in 1974, as a young man,

545
00:44:58,880 --> 00:45:02,960
he uncovered the fossilised bones
of an astonishing creature.

546
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,440
He nicknamed it Lucy.

547
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,040
Incredible. Just remarkable.

548
00:45:09,760 --> 00:45:13,200
Well, what we're looking at here
is about 40% of a single skeleton,

549
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:16,560
of course, the Lucy skeleton,
which I found in 1974.

550
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:20,080
And what's astonishing about it is
we have parts of the upper limbs,

551
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:22,480
the arms, we have parts
of the lower limbs,

552
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,720
both the thigh and the shin bone.

553
00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:28,880
Parts of the vertebral column,
the backbone, and even the ribs.

554
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:33,160
And when we mount her like this,
when we make a display like this,

555
00:45:33,160 --> 00:45:35,440
one gets the impression
of the body.

556
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,040
Lucy looked like an ape,

557
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:49,960
but she was beginning to show human
characteristics in her skeleton.

558
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:54,960
She turned out to be
an extraordinary link
in our own evolution.

559
00:45:58,760 --> 00:46:02,360
Finding Lucy, of course,
it's a fantastic fossil

560
00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:05,880
that shows the upright position,
the standing position,

561
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:10,040
the walking of the first
human-like ancestors.

562
00:46:10,040 --> 00:46:15,240
So she's a hallmark
because she walks like us.

563
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:20,440
One of the things that Lucy gives us

564
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:24,840
is a real picture of what
her pelvis looked like.

565
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:27,960
The pelvis is obviously
one of the most crucial

566
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,560
anatomical regions in the body
for the way animals get around.

567
00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:35,600
For example, if we look at
an animal that walks on all fours,

568
00:46:35,600 --> 00:46:38,120
a quadruped,
and in this case it's a chimpanzee,

569
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:42,200
you can see that the hip bones -
it's the one we feel just here -

570
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:44,520
as you can see, are facing forwards.

571
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:50,640
Whereas in humans, like ourselves,
they have been rotated around

572
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:53,880
so that the muscles on the back
are now on the side.

573
00:46:53,880 --> 00:46:56,080
They're no longer facing backwards.

574
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:57,960
And they stabilise the hip.

575
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:01,120
So that when we walk,
we walk as a striding gait.

576
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:04,160
If you watch a chimpanzee
walk bipedally,

577
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:07,160
it walks like this,
cos it's always collapsing.

578
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:12,240
So animals that walk on all fours,
like chimpanzees and Ida,

579
00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:18,360
have a very different hip bone to
animals that walk on two, like us.

580
00:47:18,360 --> 00:47:20,880
But it was the shape of Lucy's bones

581
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:25,000
that revealed an amazing
fact about our own evolution.

582
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:29,240
If you look at Lucy's pelvis,
right here -

583
00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:32,200
we've reconstructed this
side for the mirror image -

584
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:34,840
it's not identical
to a modern human.

585
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,160
But clearly,
it's shorter, broader

586
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:42,560
and these blades, the hip bones,
have been rotated around.

587
00:47:42,560 --> 00:47:47,080
So this is a clear adaptation
to upright walking on the ground.

588
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:51,120
Lucy had ape characteristics.

589
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:53,560
She was hairy, like a chimpanzee.

590
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,480
But she also had
human characteristics.

591
00:47:56,480 --> 00:47:59,360
She walked on two legs,
just as we do.

592
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:04,280
Lucy was the half ape/half man
species that Darwin predicted.

593
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:10,920
But where was the link
millions of years earlier

594
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:14,600
between us and the rest
of the animal kingdom?

595
00:48:14,600 --> 00:48:18,840
At this stage of the investigation,
Ida's skeleton is showing

596
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:24,040
a mixture of characteristics
from the non-human and human line.

597
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:29,360
This unusual combination is
bringing Jorn and the team closer

598
00:48:29,360 --> 00:48:32,480
to deciding whether
she is related to us.

599
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:37,360
This jumble of different characters,
it's very, very exciting,

600
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:41,560
because you see things that are
more anthropoid like.

601
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:45,320
You see things that
are certainly extremely primitive.

602
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:49,800
You see things that maybe
should be more like a lemur.

603
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,240
And you see all these characters
in the same skeleton

604
00:48:53,240 --> 00:48:57,120
and you need to try to explain
evolution in a new way,

605
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,040
the early evolution of primates,
in a new way, because it's there.

606
00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:02,760
You cannot take them away.

607
00:49:02,760 --> 00:49:06,080
This is really one specimen
that's frozen in time

608
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:08,880
and all these characters are there.

609
00:49:10,640 --> 00:49:13,800
Jorn and the team
are getting closer to proving

610
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:18,400
that Ida is the ancestor
of all monkeys, apes and humans.

611
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:22,120
But they need to find final proof
of that in her skeleton.

612
00:49:22,120 --> 00:49:27,040
Lucy's pelvis gave Johanson
the proof of an ape/man.

613
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:32,400
Finding an equivalent bone to link
Ida to us is much more difficult.

614
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:39,720
3.2 million years of evolution
separate us from Lucy.

615
00:49:39,720 --> 00:49:43,760
But 47 million separate us from Ida.

616
00:49:43,760 --> 00:49:45,880
That's an immense length of time.

617
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:57,080
Jorn and the team start scrutinising
every inch of Ida's body,

618
00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:01,880
when suddenly they are distracted
by something that tells them,

619
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:07,120
not about OUR evolutionary story,
but about HER personal story.

620
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:12,720
Dr Jens Franzen was analysing Ida's
wrist when he noticed something

621
00:50:12,720 --> 00:50:16,600
that suggests she may have suffered
an injury in her young life.

622
00:50:19,600 --> 00:50:24,680
Suddenly I saw the small
fragments of bone and this

623
00:50:24,680 --> 00:50:29,040
fine structure on the surface,
which is typical for a bone.

624
00:50:29,040 --> 00:50:33,720
And so it was like a lightning
at that point. "Ah, yes!"

625
00:50:33,720 --> 00:50:36,880
But really here,
really it's possible to see it.

626
00:50:36,880 --> 00:50:41,960
Because the bone is in small,
small pieces fused together

627
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:46,960
at the end of the wrist.
Yeah. It's not a nodule.

628
00:50:46,960 --> 00:50:51,200
It's not something that was formed
after the animal was dead. Right.

629
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:56,400
This is something that happened
to her while she was still alive.

630
00:50:56,400 --> 00:51:02,280
What Jens found in the wrist,
it's quite amazing, because

631
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:08,040
it looks like the wrist here is
broken and it's partly healed again.

632
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:13,520
And when it healed,
it was a lot of new bone

633
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:20,160
forming on top of the joint
for the hand. So her right hand

634
00:51:20,160 --> 00:51:23,760
was not functioning very
well after this accident.

635
00:51:30,600 --> 00:51:35,760
Research on her bones has
thrown up a tragic surprise.

636
00:51:35,760 --> 00:51:41,560
The lump on her right wrist
shows that she broke it very badly
early in her life.

637
00:51:42,640 --> 00:51:45,880
Maybe she was dropped by her mother.

638
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:50,800
The wrist continued to grow,
but it was badly deformed.

639
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,720
Her hand didn't work well

640
00:51:52,720 --> 00:51:56,520
and the team believe she might not
have been able to climb properly.

641
00:51:56,520 --> 00:52:01,080
She was probably forced to forage
for food on the ground.

642
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:03,360
And tragically for the injured Ida,

643
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:07,720
the volcanic forces that formed
the Messel lake were still active.

644
00:52:07,720 --> 00:52:11,480
They played a crucial role
in her demise.

645
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:15,520
The still waters of the lake
were often covered

646
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:19,640
by a low-lying blanket of gas,
a poisonous but undetectable

647
00:52:19,640 --> 00:52:24,440
layer of carbon dioxide
seeping from the ground.

648
00:52:24,720 --> 00:52:32,560
She was thirsty and so she went
to the lake shore and tried

649
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:38,960
to drink there, not realising
that this was a bad day for her,

650
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:44,360
because at that day such a
poisonous gas layer had developed

651
00:52:44,360 --> 00:52:50,360
and so she must have lost
immediately consciousness

652
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:54,800
and then she fell into
the water and she drowned.

653
00:52:56,720 --> 00:53:01,400
Sinking quickly through the waters,
she slid into the mud,

654
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:06,200
deep below the surface,
where she lay for 47 million years.

655
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:21,880
The bone in Ida's wrist
has given the team an extraordinary
personal story to Ida's death.

656
00:53:23,400 --> 00:53:28,160
But they're still looking for
a bone to link her with us.

657
00:53:28,160 --> 00:53:31,160
They have exhaustively
studied her skeleton

658
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:33,520
throughout a long investigation.

659
00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:39,280
They're hoping she might be
linked to our own ancestral line.

660
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,880
It's been a long journey
describing this fossil.

661
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:50,280
From the start, where
we all really believed strongly

662
00:53:50,280 --> 00:53:54,200
that she's a fantastic fossil
but she's related to lemurs,

663
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:59,200
until we now after unwinding
one character after the other,

664
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:03,280
finding that this doesn't fit, this
doesn't fit. This is something else.

665
00:54:03,280 --> 00:54:05,120
And looking at it now,

666
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:10,200
it looks so much more exciting
even than a complete lemur.

667
00:54:10,200 --> 00:54:16,440
This is something much more
important also for our own evolution.

668
00:54:16,440 --> 00:54:19,720
Jorn and the team still need to find

669
00:54:19,720 --> 00:54:23,520
that one conclusive piece of
evidence that will allow them

670
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:28,840
to be sure that she is our relative.
It's only after two years of work

671
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:31,520
that they make
a startling new discovery.

672
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:35,480
This is even shorter.

673
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,240
There is a bone in Ida's foot

674
00:54:38,240 --> 00:54:41,760
that links her with
every person on the planet.

675
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:45,640
It could be the evidence
that the first small adaptations

676
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:50,520
towards walking upright
happened 47 million years ago.

677
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:56,280
The ankle born, the so-called talus
in the Messel primate,

678
00:54:56,280 --> 00:55:01,960
shows exactly the evidence which
we see still in ourselves,

679
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:04,360
in human beings of today.

680
00:55:04,360 --> 00:55:09,240
Except that, of course,
our bones are much bigger now.

681
00:55:09,240 --> 00:55:13,280
But they show the same kind
of articulation, ja.

682
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:18,320
A tiny bone in her ankle, the talus,

683
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:22,240
is shaped like that
of a modern human.

684
00:55:22,240 --> 00:55:24,880
It is critical in connecting
the leg to the foot

685
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:27,560
and is key for bearing weight.

686
00:55:27,560 --> 00:55:30,520
This is crucial in making it
possible to walk upright.

687
00:55:31,520 --> 00:55:36,640
Its shape is restricted to
monkeys, apes and humans.

688
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,040
The lemurs and the other prosimians

689
00:55:39,040 --> 00:55:41,760
have a bone of a completely
different shape.

690
00:55:43,280 --> 00:55:48,280
The shape of this bone
tells something about
the movement of the foot.

691
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,320
And the movement of
the foot of primates

692
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:56,480
is quite different in different
groups and this particular shape

693
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:01,600
on the talus bone,
it's very, very much like humans.

694
00:56:01,600 --> 00:56:06,200
This shaped foot bone
makes Ida one of us.

695
00:56:06,200 --> 00:56:09,320
Our 47-million-year-old relative.

696
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:15,400
We are really dealing with

697
00:56:15,400 --> 00:56:20,720
a very, very early root
of anthropoids at Messel, ja.

698
00:56:27,240 --> 00:56:31,600
Ida comes from a crucial point
in our evolution,

699
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:37,240
when the early primates split
into the human and non-human groups.

700
00:56:37,240 --> 00:56:41,120
She is a fusion of both.

701
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:47,680
She is a transitional species, a
link that is now no longer missing.

702
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:51,680
It tells a part of our evolution
that's been hidden so far.

703
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:55,400
It's been hidden because all the
other specimens are so incomplete.

704
00:56:55,400 --> 00:56:58,600
They're so broken, there's
nothing almost to study.

705
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:02,120
And now this wonderful
fossil appears

706
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:05,760
and it makes the story
so much easier to tell.

707
00:57:05,760 --> 00:57:09,040
And so it's really a dream come true.

708
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:15,440
We could all be descended from Ida.

709
00:57:16,960 --> 00:57:21,920
Jorn and his team believe
they have discovered our earliest,
complete primate ancestor.

710
00:57:25,240 --> 00:57:27,080
And remarkably,

711
00:57:27,080 --> 00:57:32,360
exactly 150 years after Darwin
put forward the proposition

712
00:57:32,360 --> 00:57:36,080
that human beings were part
of the rest of animal life,

713
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:41,120
here at last we have a link
which connects us

714
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:43,760
with, not only the apes and monkeys,

715
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:46,960
but also with
the entire animal kingdom.

716
00:57:55,760 --> 00:58:00,320
This fossil turns out to be
really important for us, as humans.

717
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:05,040
This fossil is really
a part of our history.

718
00:58:05,040 --> 00:58:08,160
Truly, a fossil
that's a world heritage.

719
00:58:09,680 --> 00:58:13,520
This is the first link
to human evolution,

720
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:19,280
long before we started to divide
into different ethnic groups.

721
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:22,640
A find like this is something
for all human kind.

722
00:58:49,800 --> 00:58:52,840
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

723
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:56,360
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk