But it really doesn't seem to me like the kind of hype you guys are talking about.
My problem with it is that it's exactly the kind of early, ill-considered hype I dislike in science reporting. Science reporting tends to consist of two things: false balance and early other-enthusiasm. I'd want to see more science reporting of things that have been properly investigated by multiple parties and on which a decent spread of research has been done. I dislike the selling of this as "like an asteroid", "the rosetta stone", "the missing link" or "changes everything" - this is bollocks, it doesn't.
Again, this fossil is a really important find. I'd say it's the find of the century. I don't see what's wrong with actually getting people to know it. I don't want it to be viewed as just another fossil. I want people to realize how important a find this is.
It's an important find, I'll agree. It's a stunningly well preserved fossil but I don't believe it's the most important find of the century; I'd say
Tiktaalik roseae and
Puijila darwini are both more significant, just off the top of my head. What's more there is already considerable disagreement over whether the fossil shows what the paper's authors claim it does (that the Adapids are basal to the anthropoid primates) not helped by the fact that the paper doesn't include a decent cladistic analysis. Now, the authors may be right, but it seems awfully like they're found a really neat fossil and then jumped straight to claiming it supports their existing view on primate evolution without properly establishing their case. That's disappointing in a paper on an exciting discovery anyway but when they've coupled that with a massive co-ordinated media assault, well, colour me unimpressed.