The Link by Colin Tudge

Rarely does a fossil come along that is a true missing link- something that calls into question the ideas that scientists have about the human family and where we came from. And yet, in Germany, a fossil recently came to light that did just that. It may be the earliest human ancestor yet discovered, and for many years, it was a secret hidden in a collector's basement.

The fossil is from Germany, a place called the Meissen Pit, a former lake now buried and silted with many layers of sediment turned into rock. During a carbon dioxide outgassing bubble, the fossil, called Ida, was caught in the burst of CO2 and suffocated, then sank into the lake, where it was buried in the sediment at the bottom. It was a relatively gentle death, sedating before death, and Ida couldn't get away because her set but broken arm prevented her from getting away quickly enough.

Colin Tudge follows the story of Ida, how she was found and bought by a collector, and how that collector eventually turned over the nearly-complete skeleton to a scientist he knew, and from then on, the story of Ida as the scientist investigated and found her incredible antecedents and place in both history and the history of humanity. The preservation of the skeleton is so complete that we can not only see most of her bones, but even see what her last meal is from the muck she was preserved in,

This is a once in a lifetime find, and Ida remains the most complete fossil ever found. Her existence is almost miraculous, and has illuminated so much of the history of hominids that in the future, she will remains the crowning fossil of the story of the history leading to humans.

I used to be very into paleontology and archaeology. When I was in college, I wanted to study both and set off across the globe, finding fossils and all sorts of interesting bones or ruins. I can't say I was especially influenced by the character of Indiana Jones or the movies, but more by Roy Chapman Andrews, whose books I read ferociously as a child. The idea of travelling to faraway places, like rural China, and digging for a finding new fossils, really excited me at 11 and 12.

Well, this book fed right into that hunger, and I found the story interesting and compelling, and the history of the fossil is quite amazing. It is thanks to a fossil collector that we even have the skeleton, and the discovery of Ida has shown us a new place to look for new fossils, the Messel Pit in Germany. Each page of the unfolding story of Ida kept me glued to the page, and I read the book straight through in a frenzy of discovery.

The book presents the story in a very interesting way, and brought to my mind the book "Raptor Red", which made the story of a dinosaur interesting. Tudge does the same here, but without resorting to fiction, merely depicting the last morning/day of Ida's life, and then how the scientists treated the fossil. This book is a fascinating look at the life and death of a creature that is probably the earliest ancestor of humans, and an amazing read. Highly recommended.