Winged Robots Hint At the Origins of Flight 59
sciencehabit writes "Here's what we know about the evolution of flight: By about 150 million years ago, the forests were filled with flying — or perhaps just gliding — dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx, possibly similar to the ancestor of modern birds. What we don't know is what primitive wings were used for before bird ancestors could fly. A new study (abstract) provides some fresh data for this debate, not from fossils but from a winged robot (video included)."
Re:And it happened several times (Score:5, Funny)
I hate stating something like this without any citation, but when I was reading some textbook for a class my girlfriend was taking back in college I was surprised that flight evolved separately multiple times according to the fossil record. Intermediate wings must provide a pretty statistically significant benefit.
This [xkcd.com] is why flight evolved independently multiple times.
Oh, come on! You just knew someone was going to do it.