Around 165 million years ago, the land that is now the fossil-filled Jiulongshan Formation, near the village of Daohugou in Inner Mongolia, was covered with lichens, mosses, and liverworts. Above that shaggy, pillowy surface was a wash of green: fern fronds, conifers, and ginkgophytes, including vanished relatives of modern gingkos. (It looked a bit like the present-day Olympic Peninsula in western Washington—lush, with nary a petal in sight.) Flowering plants wouldn’t show up for another 40 million years, but insects had already arrived. Dragonflies and damselflies zipped through the air….
