{"id":18001,"date":"2013-10-17T14:38:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T19:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=18001"},"modified":"2017-12-05T22:16:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T04:16:50","slug":"the-evolution-of-four-winged-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/17\/the-evolution-of-four-winged-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"The evolution of four-winged birds"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>&#8230;When we look at living species (A and B) that we know shared a common ancestor resembling one of them (A), we can guess that the features seen in A evolved in steps more or less linearly to eventually resemble the corresponding features seen in B. For example, we think that chimpanzees and humans shared a common ancestor that resembled chimps a lot more than humans, and in fact, we consider living chimps to be a pretty close analog to this common ancestor. Chimp teeth are somewhat larger in relation to body size than human teeth, and human teeth have somewhat thicker enamel than chimp teeth. This might suggest that chimp-like teeth transformed over time, step by step, in a linear fashion, to become human-like \u2026 slightly smaller and somewhat thicker enameled \u2026 over evolutionary time.<\/p>\n<p>That would be a reasonable hypothesis, but it would be wrong. When we look at the teeth found among fossil remains of human ancestors and their relatives, we clearly see that the creatures that arose form a chimp-like ancestor bore teeth are as different from both chimp and human teeth as one might see anywhere in the fossil record of mammals evolving over a few million years. &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/10000birds.com\/did-ancient-birds-fly-with-four-wings.htm\">Read all about it here in my latest post on 10,000 Birds. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;When we look at living species (A and B) that we know shared a common ancestor resembling one of them (A), we can guess that the features seen in A evolved in steps more or less linearly to eventually resemble the corresponding features seen in B. For example, we think that chimpanzees and humans shared &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/17\/the-evolution-of-four-winged-birds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The evolution of four-winged birds<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5053,5050],"tags":[5020],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-4Gl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18001"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28296,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18001\/revisions\/28296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}