In the long arms race between life and disease, evolution has always been the oldest strategist. Researchers at the University of Oregon have resurrected antimicrobial proteins from 160 million years ago, finding that some ancient variants of the immune protein lactoferrin outperform their modern descendants against drug-resistant bacteria. The work does not promise an immediate cure, but it offers something rarer: a map drawn by deep time itself, suggesting that the answers to antibiotic resistance may already exist, waiting to be read in the molecular record of our ancestors.