Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community
Topic

flight

Claims for random evolution overlook the fact that life needs software as well as hardware

Richard W. Stevens points out that a bird does not fly just because it has wings; it needs a Explanations of the evolution of flight do not account for that.“flight” program in its brain. Read More ›

Gull wing stability prompts talk of “design” in nature

One wonders how the proper authorities are coming with Darwinizing our language, so as to take out all suggestion of design or agency in nature and in humans. Not far, it seems. Maybe, instead of following Dawkins and insisting that design in nature is an illusion, researchers should just be agnostic about it for discussion purposes, given that that is how they routinely talk about it anyway. Read More ›

Mystery: Extinct birds as well adapted for flight as surviving modern ones

But they aren’t the ancestors of the modern ones. They died out, but why? From ScienceDaily: “We know that birds in the early Cretaceous, about 115 to 130 million years ago, were capable of flight but probably not as well adapted for it as modern birds,” said Atterholt, who is now an assistant professor and human anatomy instructor at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. “What this new fossil shows is that enantiornithines, though totally separate from modern birds, evolved some of the same adaptations for highly refined, advanced flight styles.” … If enantiornithines in the late Cretaceous were just as advanced as modern birds, however, why did they die out with the dinosaurs while the ancestors Read More ›