These are exciting days for evolutionary biology. In the past twenty years or so, the molecular approach to biology—evolutionary development or more familiarly ‘evo-devo’—has swept all before it. Now we can trace development from the gene to the finished organism. Along the way, some magnificent discoveries have been made, most significantly that organisms as different as the fruitfly and the human share hugely important genes for development. We humans are put together in the same way as are those little insects that hang around compost heaps and rotting vegetables in garbage cans. This has led some enthusiasts to think that we are on the verge of—certainly in need of—a whole new theory of evolution. A new paradigm, that rejects Darwinian natural selection, or that at least reduces it to an unimportant role in cleaning up after the real work has been done. Now we have or are after a new theory-perhaps one that makes the really creative work appear in the course of development.