Re: Archaeopteryx

[ornstn@hookup.net (Ronald Orenstein)]

>In the discussion about the evolution of flight, someone asked why 
>we don't see powered flight in squirrels.
>
>How do BATS fit into the picture, please?
>
>Jenny

They don't, unfortunately.  The earliest known fossil bat (as far as I am
aware) is  still in every sense a bat, with fully developed wings - far more
like modern bats than Archaeopteryx is like modern birds.  We still do not
know how flight evolved in bats.  In any case bats are not closely related
to any of the gliding mammals extant today; the closest thing to them is the
highly derived colugo (Order Dermaptera) which is hard to imagine as a bat
ancestral type.
--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886 (home)
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