Sunday, February 17, 2019

Convergence

It is sometimes said that coelurosaur dinosaurs and the ancestors of pterosaurs convergently evolved characteristics related to flying.
It is said that pterosaur characteristics related to flying were analogous (convergent) to that of birds, rather than homologous (ancestral).

Here is an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur
A 2009 study showed that pterosaurs had a lung-air sac system and a precisely controlled skeletal breathing pump, which supports a flow-through pulmonary ventilation model in pterosaurs, analogous to that of birds.
But the parsimonious conclusion is that basal Paraves evolved FROM pterosaurs.

2 comments:

  1. Man, do you now that Birds have the same skeletal structure that dinosaurs did ?m

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