The Link by Colin Tudge (Review)

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Released June 2009 (Little, Brown & Company) * 262 pages * ISBN-13: 9780316070089

The marketing for The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor talks a lot about the newly discovered fossil Ida. In fact, all of the quotes on the back of the hard cover reference the fossil rather than the book. Add to that the copy on the inside flap of the book cover that talks almost exclusively about Ida and the author’s exclusive access to the scientists that discovered and studied her and you’re left with the impression that The Link is all about the Ida fossil. It’s not.

On the whole, The Link is a recap of what is known about life on Earth based on the fossil record with a focus on the evolution of primates. In that respect it is a decent book, though as a visual learner I would have liked more images for the different species discussed as it all became a blur of names after a while. As a book about Ida, The Link disappoints. The first 30 pages and the last 30 pages talk about Ida and the other 200 pages talk about the fossil record leading up to primates. The 200 pages are presented as “context” for the Ida fossil but I found that a bit of a stretch for a book marketed as being about one particular fossil. The 60 or so pages that do talk about Ida include a lot of repetitive information and don’t reveal much about the process of studying Ida.

I was also disappointed that the images included in the book are not referred to in the text making it difficult to find their context at times. In particular, there are several images of a computer generated three dimensional representation of Ida’s skeleton. Presumably this image was based on information collected from the Ida fossil. Since the fossil is flattened, it would have been interesting to find out how they came up with the measurements and other data needed to make a three dimensional model of the skeleton as the animal might have appeared in real life. Unfortunately, there was no mention of how the computer model was generated in the book.

On the whole, The Link is a good overview of the fossil record on primates and their ancestors. As a book on the Ida fossil, The Link simply does not have enough information on Ida to justify the marketing. Whether you enjoy The Link or not will depend largely on what you are expecting from the book. If you’re interested you can check out an interview with the scientist that discovered Ida.

You can buy this and other books by Colin Tudge at bricks and mortar stores as well as online booksellers like Amazon (US, Canada and UK) or The Book Depository (free shipping to 90 countries).