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Originally Posted by PonyPotato
Anthropology nerd here.
I haven't read enough about this specific fossil to comment much, other than that it makes me a little sad that people hardly ever take interest in anthropology unless it's a big find like this - or something like Lucy.
Personally, I would argue that we will never find a "true" missing link between apes/monkeys/humans because the way that evolution occurs means that a single identifiable species that split into three different lines (or even two distinct lines) may not actually exist, and probably will not exist in the very limited fossil record.
It's most likely that a species of early primate split into two populations, each of those populations undergoing changes that eventually led to apes and humans as two distinct ends. The phases in between may or may not be distinct - it's likely that the two populations were capable of interbreeding for a while, though appearing to be distinct species (especially by that standard by which we must classify species in fossils), but eventually one group became isolated enough to evolve differently.
It's difficult to draw lines between species, because there are MANY different definitions of the term, and the fossil definition of species is different from the biological definition, as we can't quite test an interbreeding theory on creatures that lived millions of years ago.
/end nerd-rant
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All species necessarily have a single common ancestor, unless you believe life evolved multiple times. There is undoubtedly a "missing link" between all the apes/monkeys/humans at least as I understand missing link, which is a single species that links the origin of the species in question. As in the missing link between us and chimps is the most recent common ancestor that gave rise to both of us.