The primate fossil that captured the world's attention a month or so ago has been found to not be our earliest ancestor, but distant kin to humanity.

From the CBC News article:

The scientists who unveiled Darwinius said it was not a direct ancestor to humans or monkeys, but could show what an ancestor of apes and humans might have looked like. They said it shared some characteristics with higher primates worth examining.

The new analysis says the adapoids don't belong to the same major grouping of primates as apes, monkeys and humans. The features it shares with higher primates, such as the loss of certain teeth, must have evolved independently, the researchers said.

"This is a rigorous analysis based on many features," said Eric Sargis, an anthropology professor at Yale. He said he'd found the argument of the Darwinius researchers unconvincing, so the new result came as no surprise.

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Read the full article here.