The discovery of Ardipithecus ramidus has proven, unsurprisingly, to be yet another wagon on which both creationists and undereducated science reporters have hitched their spin-machines. This is not a surprise to veterans of the Great Evolution Wars, as waged in the public mindscape between the factions of science and anti-science, considering that every new discovery is uniformly proclaimed as “THE MISSING LINK” or “NOT A TRANSITIONAL FOSSIL” by each camp simultaneously.

Never mind that “the missing link” is a nonsensical phrase now, overused well past its time from when we had no idea as to humans’ evolutionary ancestry whatsoever and had absolutely no fossils that could be considered transitional between a basal form of great ape and Homo Sapiens. Now that we have a veritable plethora of such forms, there aren’t merely gaps being filled in, we’re even discovering new side-branches that never really made it, like Homo floresiensis. Ardipithecus ramidus helps to show what came before Australopithecus, but it’s not revolutionary, the 17-year wait before the great reveal notwithstanding. Unfortunately, National Geographic picked a pretty horrible title, suggesting that this discovery “disproves the missing link”, another article title that creationists will seize upon as though it suggests the concept of evolution itself is at risk.

Mike Haubrich has an epic post decrying the poor science reporting we’ve been subjected to lately over at Quiche Moraine. He even titled it provocatively, and argued his point cogently, seemingly daring the quote-miners to come and get him.

The nineteenth century was one of the most amazing eras in human discovery yet undertaken, because those methodical explorers hammering away in quarries to find and classify “terrible lizards,” gathering and cataloging rocks and fossils, comparing and contrasting anatomical features from stone to modern skeletons and trying to decipher how humans came about, well, they broke the old picture that illustrated that we are in fact a separate and special creation. They taught us that we are a part of nature and not separate from it. Unfortunately, breaking the old picture necessitated the assembly of a new one. We still only have a few soggy and worn pieces and are trying to fit them in place without a complete guide.

DNA and genomics aid in our project to discover who we are and where we come from (and where we are going). Incompletely fossilized and mineralized bones of ancestors (or non-ancestors as in the case of Ardipithecus) will show us where we have been right and where we have been wrong.

So, all that we now know about human evolution is quite possibly wrong. But that is what is so exciting about Ardi. Fifteen papers were simultaneously released on what has been learned so far from the discovery. From those papers will come new questions about humans and our friends the chimps and bonobos. When did they start climbing trees? Why did they return to trees while we became ground-walkers?

It’s well worth a read. As always.