OK, this is get­ting out of hand now. I mean, it was out of hand before, but it just got passed the point where even I can stay quiet about it. It’s like we’ve just passed the event-​​horizon of some new kind of pub­li­city black hole and are now tum­bling help­lessly towards a sin­gu­lar­ity of over­state­ment where, rather than the laws of phys­ics, it’s our sense of pro­por­tion that breaks down.

If you’re not sure what I’m talk­ing about, take a look at this You­Tube clip, and see if you can guess.

Edit: Unfor­tu­nately, You­Tube have removed the video in ques­tion for ‘terms of use viol­a­tion.’ It was a trailer that described a TV pro­gram on the His­tory Chan­nel as the most import­ant event in 47 mil­lion years. It was utterly over the top.

Seen it? Any ideas?

It’s a TV show about a fossil. Ser­i­ously. Gran­ted, it’s a pretty inter­est­ing, par­tic­u­larly com­plete fossil of a 47 mil­lion year-​​old trans­it­ive prim­ate called Ida (who was a mem­ber of a spe­cies we’ve called Dar­winius masil­lae), which is some­thing you don’t exactly see every day. But still: a fossil.

It’s not going to change the world, it’s not going to revolu­tion­ise the way we think about ourselves and it most cer­tainly is not the miss­ing link (which is — as I under­stand it — a term no ser­i­ous palae­on­to­lo­gist would use any­way.) But some­how, the media have got hold of it as some kind of world-​​changing event and are run­ning with it, real­ity be damned. The hype machine has been in full swing for about a week now and, if this video is to be believed, is show­ing no signs of slow­ing down. If it wasn’t quite so depress­ing, it’d be quite amaz­ing how much they can make of so little.

Hat tip to Carl Zim­mer over at The Loom for this and other sens­ible writing about Darwinius.