On February 18, 1870, the anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley delivered a warning to his colleagues in the Geological Society of London.

In the 11 years since Charles Darwin had published On the Origin of Species numerous fossil finds had confirmed the reality of evolution, but Huxley warned his peers that they should be careful in declaring the ancestral status of fossil species. Fossils proposed as transitional forms could be said “to be evidence in favour of evolution, inasmuch as it shows a possible road by which evolution may have taken place”, Huxley advised. “But the mere discovery of such a form does not, in itself, prove that evolution took place by and through it.”

The international team of scientists that unveiled a cat-sized fossil primate dubbed Darwinius masillae, nicknamed “Ida”, last Tuesday could have benefited from heeding Huxley's words.

Over the past two years they have worked with Atlantic Productions to launch a media blitz heralding Ida as one of our early relatives. With a scientific description in the journal PLoS One, a book, two documentaries, a website and even a Twitter feed prepared beforehand, Ida burst onto the scene as the “holy grail” of evolution, the “ancestor of us all”.

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Ida is undoubtedly a spectacular fossil. A nearly complete fossil primate, with a body outline and stomach contents, she is the sort of discovery palaeontologists dream about. It may come as a surprise, then, that Ida does not change everything we thought we knew about human evolution. Indeed, she may tell us more about the origins of lemurs than our own species.

A little more than 55 million years ago there was a split in primate evolution. One branch contained the early relatives of lemurs and lorises, while the other was composed of the ancestors of tarsiers, monkeys, and apes (including us). Ida was an adapid, a group of primates placed on the lemur branch by many palaeontologists. But those who described her disagree; they claim that Ida brings the adapids closer to the ancestors of monkeys and apes.

But as my elementary school maths teachers drilled into my head, you cannot receive full credit for an answer unless you show your work. To resolve evolutionary relationships palaeontologists compare hundreds of traits across a wide array of related creatures and use computer analysis to create a hypothetical evolutionary tree. Ida's description, by contrast, compares only 30 traits (some of which cannot even be observed in Ida) with living primates. The evidence that Ida shares a closer kinship with us than with lemurs is simply not there.

Yet the conclusions of the PLoS One paper are tame compared with the media buzz. The new book and documentaries proclaim Ida as “the Link” and “Our Earliest Ancestor”. The message is unmistakable: Ida is the “missing link” in our evolution.

There is some irony in calling Ida the missing link. She was named Darwinius in honour of Charles Darwin, but the phrase “missing link” harkens back to a pre-evolutionary idea of nature. Called the Great Chain of Being, this interpreted all life as forming an immutable hierarchy, ordained by God, from “lower” to “higher”. Scholars believed that God favoured a full creation and each rank connected to the next, but “missing links” presented a problem. The link between humans and lower animals was the most elusive of all.

Our understanding of evolution could scarcely be more different. There is no evolutionary end point or fore-ordained hierarchy of beasts. Life is better understood from Darwin's perspective - as a wildly branching bush constantly being pruned and sending out new shoots through evolution. Calling Ida a missing link may grab attention, but it is incongruous with what Darwin proposed.

But what about the scientists who described Ida? Are they victims of the media machine? Some, such as the University of Michigan palaeontologist Philip Gingerich, have confided their discomfort with being rushed in their research by Atlantic Productions, but his co-author, Jørn Hurum, from the University of Oslo, has been enjoying the limelight. In interview after interview he has asserted that Ida truly is our ancestor and that her picture will be in every science textbook for the next 100 years.

This is not the first time that showmanship has superseded science. Earlier this year the National Geographic Channel aired a documentary about “Lyuba”, an exceptionally well-preserved baby mammoth that has yet to be scientifically described. Last March the History Channel showed Predator X, a programme conceived by Dr Hurum and Atlantic Productions about another as-yet-unpublished prehistoric beast. These media events were different, however, in that they had nothing to do with our ancestry. Frozen mammoths and giant marine reptiles are fascinating, but they do not strike at the heart of the evolution/creationism culture war in the way that a potential human ancestor does. This is why I wish more care had been taken in promoting Ida.

If Ida does turn out be more closely related to lemurs than to humans, creationists may use the hype to paint evolutionary scientists as glory hounds who care more about publicity than accuracy. Ida would not be an “icon of evolution”, as Dr Hurum hopes, but a public embarrassment that creationists would surely use to sow further doubt about evolution. Likening Ida to the Holy Grail and the Lost Ark only compounds the problem; creationists will undoubtedly argue that these metaphors reveal that evolution is a religion with its own holy relics.

What could have been a unique opportunity to communicate science has quickly developed into a fiasco. Science proceeds through discovery and debate, and hypotheses do not become accepted by flooding the media with press releases. Scientific scrutiny of Ida has only just begun, and regardless of who her closest living relatives are, I hope the debate surrounding her will not sink away from sight. She truly is an amazing find, but for now I think that she has taught us more about science communication than our ancestry.

Brian Switek is a science writer who blogs for ScienceBlogs.com and Smithsonian Magazine. Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor - The Link will be broadcast on BBC1 tonight

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