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On the day after the festivities at the American Museum of Natural History, the star of the show—a 47-million-year-old primate fossil named Ida—is intact, but science is still recuperating from the massive media hangover.  Jørn Hurum, the University of Oslo paleontologist who orchestrated the hubbub about the monkey–lemur intermediary, wasn’t coy about his intentions. “Any pop band is doing the same thing, ” he told The New York Times.

But the newspaper of record also coined the phrase the “Mediacene age,” and the response from the science blogosphere was harsher than the entertainment press’ response to Britney Spears’ last attempt at a comeback. Called by its publicists a “missing link” in human evolution, the Darwinius masillae fossil was displayed for the first time in advance of a television documentary called “The Link” and a book, also called the “The Link.”  (Please click on this hyperlink to read the actual paper published in PLoS One)

The Great Beyond provided a roundup of the less-than-impressed responses from outside scientists who have reviewed the research. (But as you probably guessed, scientists have an ambivalent relationship with the media, particularly when it happens to shine brighter on one’s competitors than one’s colleagues).

So, what next? Will there be a backlash to the backlash, when the naysayers quiet down and realize that the fossil is still pretty neat? Will the pomp and circumstance get people thinking about evolution and visiting a museum that has lost a quarter of its $170 million endowment and $3.1 million in this year’s city budget?

And while it is a popular misconception to call Darwinius a “missing link,” the term is certainly more apropos than Fox News’ choice of metaphors: the Holy Grail.

Image of Darwinius fossil courtesy PLoS ONE

10 Comments

1. 1. candide 04:52 PM 5/20/09

   The "chain" of evolution has many gaps - and they can be filled with many "missing links."
   
   Perhaps the term was not wisely used as it was perceived as THE missing link, which has a very specific perception to the public and media.

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2. 2. hotblack 07:06 PM 5/20/09

   Jesus did it.

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3. 3. Science junkie 07:18 PM 5/20/09

   maybe its just that some people have a difficult time understanding that pretty much all of science is hypothesis and theory... carbon dating or any other form of dating is a man created test using man created theories and therefore is wont to have fallacies. That being just a small example, one can expand it to pretty much anything, like attempting to piece together the evolution of a single celled organism into homo sapiens sapiens. From the Asexual single celled organism that was the basis of all life on Earth, if that is the case, to homo sapiens sapiens is a near infinite amount of missing links.

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4. 4. scientific earthling 08:10 PM 5/20/09

   Oh my Papa,
   to me you are so wonderful.
   Oh my Papa,
   to me you are the truth.

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5. 5. ambertooth in reply to Science junkie 05:37 AM 5/21/09

   Science junkie: "maybe its just that some people have a difficult time understanding that pretty much all of science is hypothesis and theory"
   
   And all of religion is faith. Considering that this is a science website, it would almost be a welcome surprise if such articles actually attracted comments that dealt with the issues which they pose. In the case of this article that would be the issue, not so much of the fossil itself, which still has to be scientifically evaluated, but whether the media circus which surrounded this fossil's public presentation is counterproductive to the science.
   
   I certainly agree that 'missing link' is a ghastly term, and detrimental to a true understanding of what such fossils represent. But this article also points out that the museum in question has had both its endowments and its budget slashed, and I'm not going to be the one to hastily judge an enterprising little publicity hooplah on the part of that museum. Although it's still pretty sad that what is actually our collective human heritage is forced to engage in such tactics for its own benefit.

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6. 6. Faultline 10:55 AM 5/21/09

   So, does this fossil represent a member of a species that underwent an evolutionary split from primitive lemurs into the direction of primitive monkeys?

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7. 7. siveh in reply to Faultline 02:06 PM 5/24/09

   oh hai

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8. 8. siveh in reply to Faultline 02:08 PM 5/24/09

   yes it has primate-like characteristics, like opposable thumbs

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9. 9. eatdog 06:15 PM 5/26/09

   It's all Bill Clintons fault

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10. 10. eatdog 06:19 PM 5/26/09

    It's all Bill Clinton's fault

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