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Living fossils, taxa with similar members now and in the deep past, have recently come under scrutiny. Those who think the concept should be retained have argued for its epistemic and normative utility. This paper extends the epistemic utility of the living fossils concept to include ways in which a taxon's living fossil status can serve as evidence for other claims about that taxon. I will use some insights from developmental biology to refine these claims. Insofar as these considerations demonstrate the epistemic utility of the living fossils concept, they support retaining the concept and using it in biological research.Living fossils are taxa in which extant organisms morphologically resemble fossilized organisms; paradigmatic examples include horseshoe crabs, coelacanths, and tuataras.Recently the living fossil concept has received considerable criticism, with even paradigmatic cases being contested. Some argue that the concept is not very useful for biologists, since these diverse cases are unlikely to be the product of unified phenomena, while others argue that the concept may be useful for certain epistemic and normative

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