The evolutionary story is one of constant change. It proposes that simpler life forms evolved into complicated organisms whose offspring branched out in ever more diverse directions. But the modern forms of some creatures are so similar to their ancestors’ fossils that it is clear they haven’t changed much at all. If some species diversified, why didn’t others?

Fossils from South China are being touted as the first animals to have evolved on the planet. A recently-published study on these tiny organisms, however, presents a fresh evolutionary puzzle. Although the common assumption is that the “first animals” emerged from the ocean, the Chinese Doushantuo Formation looks like it came from lake deposits.

“The last of the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago,”¹ according to an unsupported claim by evolutionary researchers that has been popularized in books and movies such as Jurassic Park. This conclusion is so ubiquitous that most people don’t even question whether or not it’s true.

Evolutionary museums and textbooks have often portrayed modern birds as the descendants of dinosaurs, a story that has been presented without empirical support. Now, a new "feathered" dinosaur discovery has thrown a wrench into the already dysfunctional machinery of the dino-to-bird tale.