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volutionary novelties abound,” writes paleobiologist Douglas Erwin in the introduction to his new book The Origins of the New. Take grasses. They’ve carpeted the continents in undulating blankets of green, blue, and brown for millions and millions of years. They’ve been so successful that they’ve completely altered ecosystems across the planet, modifying not just terrestrial habitat but regional climate. But it took grasses a long time to grow to such dominance. They first appeared 55 million years ago, and they were ecological nobodies for a long time after that. First, they were novel. Then, much later, they were wildly successful. There was a huge lag between the two.

This is more important than it might at first seem, argues Erwin. Today, many scientists equate novelty with innovation, and this poses a problem for our understanding and study of evolution.