The main part (“Slab A”) remained with the collector, while the other part ("Slab B") was sold to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, Wyoming, in the United States. Until 2000, Ida's remains were split into two pieces. A private collector discovered Ida near Messel, Germany, in 1983. Hurum persuaded the museum to purchase Ida. Jørn Hurum, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway. The scientific team that introduced Ida to the world was led by Dr. Rounded fingertips with nails are classic primate features. Her hands show she had rounded fingertips with nails, not claws. Ida had long fingers and toes, and opposable thumbs. Her last meal- fruit-was still preserved in her gut millions of years after she ate it. However, scientists didn’t have to guess what she ate.
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The shape of Ida’s teeth suggests she was a vegetarian. Nocturnal animals are active mainly at night. Ida had large eye sockets, which suggests she was nocturnal. She didn’t die of a broken wrist, but it almost certainly contributed to her early death. Ida’s remains also show she had a broken right wrist. Ida's legs were longer than her arms, indicating she was a le aper.
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Her body is 24 centimeters (9 inches) long. From end to end she is only 58 centimeters (23 inches) long, about the size of a small house cat. Ida was a small primate, about 9 months old when she died. By comparison, the famous “ Lucy” fossil, Australopithecus afarensis, is only 40 percent complete.
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Ninety-five percent complete, she is the most complete primate fossil ever found. Paleontologists, scientists who study fossils, estimate that Ida died 47 million years ago. Ida (pronounced EE-duh) is the most perfectly preserved primate fossil in the world.