When the substantially complete Ardipithecus ramidus was reported in Science this week, science reporters all over the world chimed in, as well they might. Since the story was so widely covered, there have been a couple of critical reviews of the reporting itself, which you might find of interest.
Digitally rendered composite hand of the "Ardi" partial skeleton. Image courtesy of Science/AAAS
The Knight Science Journalism Tracker reviews science news every day. Its coverage of the Ardi story is interesting, arguing that many writers missed an important point about the story: the length of time between paleontologist Tim White's first report of Ardipithecus in 1994 and the publication on last Thursday. I'm not really convinced that that's a big deal—Ardi is a pretty important fossil find with deep level ramifications about how we think we humans ended up the charmingly constructed way we are. To me, it's not surprising at all that it took 15 years to get it into press. It takes a long time to change an established paradigm, and if White and colleagues had said in 1994 "we found a fossil that suggests that knuckle walking evolved after the human/chimpanzee evolutionary split" it would have been hard going. Instead, they got all their ducks in a row and then published. Lots of those ducks appeared in the 11 papers in Science.
Also, PZ Myers, paleontologist evolutionary biologist and blogger at Pharyngula, takes a whack at science reporting on Ardi as well, in a much less friendly manner, highlighting the worst of the press reports. Good for a giggle.
- Knight Tracker: ARDI! News, finally, on a famous but cloistered fossil...
- Pharyngula: Ardipithecus ramidus
More (Excellent) Coverage
- Discover Blog (Carl Zimmer): Ardipithecus: We Meet At Last
- Science Now (Anne Gibbons): Ancient Skeleton May Rewrite Earliest Chapter of Human Evolution
- San Francisco Chronicle: The oldest known prehuman revealed
- Toronto Star: Did apes descend from us?
- Washington Post Blog (Joel Achenbach): Ain't No Missing Link
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