Gobi fossil reveals 'Cretaceous rabbit' was evolutionary cousin, not ancestor

From the windswept sediments of the Gobi Desert, a six-inch skeleton has quietly redrawn a branch of the mammalian family tree. Long mistaken for an ancestor of modern rabbits, the Cretaceous-era creature has been revealed through new analysis to belong to an entirely separate lineage — one that flourished briefly during the age of dinosaurs and then vanished without living heirs. The discovery is a reminder that the deep past resists easy categorization, and that science earns its authority not by holding conclusions fixed, but by remaining willing to revise them.