'Missing Link' Ida Is Just Media Hype
But despite the hype, a whirlwind of questions still surrounds the discovery. First, the
environment in which the fossil was kept for 20 years is unclear. Ida, who bears the
technical name Darwinius masillae in honor of this year’s 200th anniversary of British
naturalist Charles Darwin’s birth, was found in 1983 by an amateur fossil hunter at
Germany’s Messel Pit. He kept it in unknown conditions before deciding to sell it through
a dealer two years ago.
Second, the purchaser’s stated motivation for obtaining the fossil seemed to emphasize
business over research. University of Oslo paleontologist Jørn Hurum nicknamed the
fossil “Ida” after his own small daughter and told UK news outlet The Guardian, “You
need an icon or two in a museum to drag people in…this is our Mona Lisa and it will be
our Mona Lisa for the next 100 years.”1 Hurum purchased the fossil for an undisclosed
sum from the dealer based on seeing only three photographs and not the actual fossil,
a “huge gamble” that suggests pressure to make some kind of return on the university’s
investment.
Third, the fossil was hailed as humanity’s missing evolutionary link before the technical
details of the find were published. This strategy effectively prevented the scientific
community from evaluating the data and possibly calling a halt to the campaign on
account of the fact that Ida has no transitional features and is therefore irrelevant to
the evolutionary hypothesis of human development. Paleontologists are speaking out,
but their voices are thus far being drowned out by the hype. Richard Kay from Duke
University told Science that “the data is cherry-picked.”2
Fossil Claimed To Be Missing Link Revealed
And they have been critical of the hype surrounding the presentation of Ida.
The fossil was launched amid great fanfare at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York, by the city's mayor.
Although details of the fossil have only just been published in a scientific
journal - PLoS One - there is already a TV documentary and book tie-in.
Dr Chris Beard, curator of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and author of The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey,
said he was "awestruck" by the publicity machine surrounding the new fossil.
He argued that it could damage the popularisation of science if the creature was not all that it was hyped up to be.