although the fossil record for every species is spotty and interrupted (with the exception of a few marine invertebrates that have led extremely thick and uninterrupted strata of shells).

Another way of looking at this is that every new fossil is a missing link between those who came before and those that follow, and the term "missing link" is a judgement call, and should probably be reserved for specimens that shed light on periods which yielded few fossils.

This specimen appears to be genuinely interesting because it a very early, if not the earliest known, primate. But now that you mention it, good old-fashioned publicity and hype can't be ruled out either.