While reading websites, blogs, newspapers, or popular magazines, one frequently encounters a statement like this: “The discovery of new human fossil X completely rewrites the textbooks!” Many editors would set this entire sentence in bold capital letters. Or, “New fossil primate is the first monkey …” or, “New higher primate is the first human ancestor.” Such hysteria has become a normal part of press hyperbole. One expects that virtually every new primate or human fossil will completely rewrite the textbooks. But is it true? Dinosaur paleontology also receives a great deal of attention from both the public and the press. Do new dinosaur fossils mandate a complete rewriting of the textbooks?

A study has been conducted on both Old World higher primates (catarrhines) and dinosaurs, testing to see whether new fossils result in a complete re-vamping of evolutionary history—that is, do new fossil finds repeatedly rewrite the evolutionary history of a group? Tarver et al. (2010) discover that this is not true for catarrhine primates over the last 200 years of study. The basic outline of catarrhine evolution has remained the same since the early twentieth century. New dinosaur fossils, on the other hand, do continually and radically shift our understanding of dinosaur evolutionary history. Many new lineages have been discovered, and new fossils expand our understanding of the geographic expansion of dinosaurs. Our understanding of dinosaur evolution changes rapidly and wildly. Yet, fossils of new catarrhine primates result in virtually no change in the understanding of their fossil record and evolutionary history. Clearly, the mass media is unduly fixated on catarrhine primates. The principal reason for this is that humans are catarrhine primates, and the merest scrap of a new human fossil generates hysteria in the popular press. This also reflects a funding bias. Funding agencies are more apt to focus on primate (including human) paleontology, than paleontological work on other animal groups. Dinosaurs are clearly an exception—major dinosaur research programs have been funded by private donations alone. This is why a test of whether new catarrhine primate or dinosaur fossils truly do rewrite evolutionary history is important. As a physical anthropologist, I am irreverent in pointing this out: dinosaur discoveries trump those of primates in terms of the advance of knowledge. Why study primates at all? Is this just stubborn single-mindedness, or a simple exercise in human vanity?