The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D. C. just finished a five-year renovation of its dinosaur hall at a cost of around $110 million.¹ The renovated exhibit opened to the public on June 8, 2019. Naturally, the television news segment made the usual references to “millions of years” and the supposed evolutionary history of life on Earth.

The scientific literature contains over 100 examples of original biomaterials in fossils.¹ These include a few decades’ worth of reports, using at least a few dozen independent techniques to target specific vertebrate biochemicals—such as the hardy protein collagen.

Descriptions of feathered dinosaurs continue to wing their way into scientific literature. While most researchers see each new example as another link in a Darwinian story of reptiles somehow evolving into birds, others fit these fossils into more classical categories. Two new discoveries give owners of these opposing views new opportunities to peck at each other’s ideas of bird beginnings.