"Birds, Bats, and Pterosaurs: Winged Flight with a Variety of Wings"

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Birds, Bats, and

Pterosaurs: Winged
Flight with a Variety of
Wings
When multiple lineages evolve to fill the same habitat, there
is no rule that they must become similar to each other.
Rather, they retain the characters of their ancestors. In
Carboniferous times, giant dragonflies filled the skies. In
Mesozoic times, flying reptiles called pterosaurs overtook the
dragonflies. Now, the air is dominated by birds and bats.
Yet each of these four dragonflies, pterosaurs, birds, and
bats are entirely different from each other in terms of body
structure and flight propulsion. If there were a certain type
of wing best suited for flight, then we should expect to see
these four converge toward a common type of wing. Yet this
is not the case. For 400 million years, the dragonflies have
kept essentially the same body plan, having no bony digits to
support their wings. In contrast, pterosaur wings were
supported by a single very long bony digit on the front edge
of the wing. Yet birds' digits are short and contained deep
inside the wing. Also, birds are the only one of the four to
employ feathers in flight. If feathers are easily derived from
scales, as some believe, then why were pterosaur wings so
lacking in them? Bats, for their part, exhibit a wing
structure entirely different from the first three, having four
very long bony digits to support their wings.
Therefore, natural selection does not force species to
evolve the highest and best structure. For every habitat and
niche, there are a variety of structures capable of succeeding
THIS SECTION: in it. Hence, species tend to retain the structures of their
ancestors, rather than develop entirely new structures.
SUDDEN
ORIGINS AND When an ancestral structure proves inadequate, it is
RAPID
modified, not immediately discarded for a new structure.
EVOLUTION
Thus, animals are not perfectly adapted to their habitats.
IN THE FOSSIL
They just make do with what they have, gradually tweaking
RECORD
it through the aeons to make it workable.

Above: Archaeopteryx, the famous link

between birds and dinosaurs. Notice
unmistakable bird feathers have been
impressed into the rock. Also notice the threefingered hands with claws. This feature
confirms that it must have been related to the
carnivorous theropod dinosaurs which had the
same type of three-fingered clawed hand.

Applying this to the Cambrian Explosion, one might

ponder why so many different forms suddenly emerged in
the Cambrian, for they did not need to diverge into such an
array of various forms to fill new habitats. Cambrian life
could have retained the same basic structure of the most
primitive phyla, cnidarians and sponges, and made only
small adaptations over time to attain the full potential of

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"Birds, Bats, and Pterosaurs: Winged Flight with a Variety of Wings"

those phyla. There was no adaptive necessity for radically

different structures to evolve in the Cambrian as they did.

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Your Comments Here

Click here to find out more about sudden origins and rapid
evolution in the fossil record.
The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by
many ancient Christian texts. Instead of an Almighty
Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the
universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity. The
angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.
There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is
just one among them. Satan the Devil writes scripture, and
thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1. Archaeology and
modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed
corrupted. Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve. Esoteric
prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the
dark forces that govern the cosmos. Such are the ancient
Christian writings.

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Sciencevindicates the truth of these ideas. Evolution often

happens too fast for Darwins theory. Gaps in the fossil
record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts
together with natural selection. Astrobiology reveals that
intelligent life probably evolved long before us. The fossil
record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and
transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse
lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species. Evidently,
aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the
worlds religions.
This is not fiction. All these facts are thoroughly documented
in the links above.
Above: Survival of the Fittest is the
harsh reality of this dark and wicked cosmos.
Below: But some evolutionary transitions
happened too fast for Survival of the Fittest to
be the cause.

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"Birds, Bats, and Pterosaurs: Winged Flight with a Variety of Wings"

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