Earlier this month, there was a flurry of activity on senior editor Ron Hogan‘s Twitter stream about a mysterious book known to booksellers (who received it in unmarked boxes with strict instructions not to open until today) only as “Project X”:
A brief guessing game followed: “Book Promotion 101” expert Bella Stander quickly determined that “Lucy Highfield” was code for “Lucy, found in a high field,” a reference to the fossilized hominid discovered in 1974. A source at a national bookstore chain informed us that the actual author of the book might be Colin Tudge, a specialist in natural history and genetics, which further solidified that hypothesis concerning the book’s contents.
And now it can be told: Little, Brown is set to unveil Tudge’s The Link, a book revealing the backstory of the discovery (in the Messel Pit of Germany) of a 47-million-year-old primate fossil that is being heralded as evidence of a “transitional species” that shares characteristics of both the nonhuman and human evolutionary lines. The book’s publication coincides with a History Channel documentary airing on Memorial Day.