The publisher has announced details about their closely-guarded book set for release on May 20, THE LINK, written by biologist Colin Tudge. It focuses on what they call “the astonishing new discovery that could change everything”–a previously-secret, perfectly fossilized early primate, “older than the previously most famous primate fossil, Lucy, by an astonishing forty-four million years,” held in a vault “deep within the heart of one of the world’s leading natural history museums.” Called Ida, they say this fossil “rewrites what we’ve assumed about the earliest primate origins” and the book offers “exclusive access to the ï¬rst scientists to study her.”
Those scientists published their findings for the first time today inPLoS One, the open-access journal of the Public Library of Science, which marks the first announcement of this remarkable fossil.
Covering the full story of the discovery, excavation, and preservation, and the revolutionary significance of Ida, the book includes a foreword by Norwegian fossil scientist Dr. Jørn Hurum of the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum, “who for the past two years has led an
international team of scientists as they secretly conducted a detailed forensic analysis of the
extraordinary fossil, studying the data to decode humankind’s ancient origins.”
The book is also being published by Little Brown UK; Piper in Germany; and JC Lattes in France.