The missing link between humans and apes
![the missing link between humans and apes the missing link between humans and apes](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HM0M6uYgscM/maxresdefault.jpg)
#The missing link between humans and apes series#
Last December, when the magazine PaleoAnthropology published a whole series of studies on Australopithecus sediba, an African hominin described in 2010, various media headlines announced that the “missing link” had been found. McGREGORĭubois’s proclamation was debated at the time, but one image has survived to this day: an orderly single file showing an evolution from monkeys to Homo sapiens, as if the former were half-made beings.
![the missing link between humans and apes the missing link between humans and apes](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/74/75/f2/7475f29233f035f774f68fc3194ca15e.jpg)
When Eugène Dubois discovered the remains of the Java Man, he presented it to the world as the missing link. When Eugène Dubois discovered the remains of Java Man, an extinct species he named Anthropopithecus erectus (later Pithecanthropus erectus, today Homo erectus), the Dutch paleoanthropologist soon announced to the world that he had finally discovered the missing link. In the 19th century, when it began to be understood that the human being was a species that emerged, like all the others, through a process of biological evolution, an expression arose: the “missing link,” the ape-man who was supposed to connect Homo sapiens with the apes, like a snapshot to be glued into an empty spot in the family album.