Evolution of flight!

[bomb4268]

I was wondering if anyone knows about the origin of flight in birds? Any great or available sources with useful information?

[mith]

you can look for books on bird evolution

[Asyncritus]

There's a lot of hot air flying round (heh heh) about the origin of flight. Some of them less comical than others.

Here's one of the better ones:
http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/

Did you know flight 'evolved' FOUR separate and distinct times?
1 Birds
2 Bats
3 Insects
4 Pterosaurs

Each one of these is an entirely distinct and completely different to the others.

The wings are totally different, and formed in completely different ways:

Bat wings are fromed from the FINGERS of the forelimb:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... atwing.gif

Bird wings are formed from feathers growing on the whole of the forelimb:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... /aves.html

Insects are a law unto themselves, and very often have 2 pairs of wings:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... t_edit.jpg

Pterosaurs have wings formed from the elongation of the little finger!
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrate ... urwing.gif

It's all really wonderful.

Now here's the really scientific bit:

How did all this evolve?

Your guess is as good as anybody's!

Asyncritus
http://www.got.to/belligerentdesign

[WhatsItsFace]

There's a lot of hot air flying round (heh heh) about the origin of flight. Some of them more comical than others.

Here's one of the better ones:
http://www.biology-online.org/biology-forum/

Did you know flight 'evolved' FOUR separate and distinct times?
1 Birds
2 Bats
3 Insects
4 Pterosaurs

Each one of these is an entirely distinct and completely different to the others...

Don't think I could add anything substantial to this, for birds it evolved during the late Jurassic period (the first "bird" being Archaeopteryx, though it's believed it wasn't capable of true flight, only vertical climbing). Their is a theory that flight evolved as a means of helping small feathered dinosaurs run up vertical surfaces to escape larger predators, that more than likely couldn't climb at all. Eventually the chest and arm muscles developed to the point the first birds could sustain true flight.

[dvthomas]

I was just going through the site when I found this interesting thread. I am glad to have found such a thread. I didn't know that the evolution of birds are traced back to the period of dinosaurs, I thought that it was even before that.

[WhatsItsFace]

We live and learn

Currently the earliest birds appeared in the fossile record around the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous periods.

[LeoPol]

The main thing was - to learn to fly, and then the morphology of the wings could be changed
http://translate.google.ru/translate?pr ... ory_state0