A lizard that lived 100 million years ago had wings coming out of its ribs and had four free limbs
The first fossil of a flying lizard was discovered in northeastern China, and judging by the wing design, these were winning wings! Instead of using its modified front limbs to create power for flight (as did pterodactyls of the same time - a hundred million years ago), the 15-centimeter-long Xianglong zhaoi lizard sailed with a pair of wings built on a giant rib, thus freeing its front limbs to climb trees and grip the environment. Chinese researchers reported in the journal PNAS.
Despite its fragile characteristics, the hundred-million-year-old glider is an ancient experience: birds, which will rule the skies in the future, opened wings from their front legs, and the only flying reptile today, the draco lizard, has much less aerodynamic wings.
Why did evolution choose the path of the winged animals we know, whose wings developed from their front legs, over a solution that allows the use of the four limbs and the addition of wings built on the basis of enlarged ribs?
(Image: Zhao Chuang and Xing Lida)
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Curious, as Nadav said the fins help the leviathan and other marine creatures to navigate in the water almost without friction,
Their bodies are also well built in a hydrodynamic way, hydro = water, dynamic = movement, which means movement in the water, the same
Birds have well-built beaks in an aerodynamic way. Aero = in the air, dynamic movement, which means movement in the air.
Doron
Curiously, as in all other creatures, the development of wings resulted from mutations that gave these creatures an evolutionary advantage (obtaining food, survival, reproduction...) and thus they continued to evolve.
The same goes for the whale.. without a fin it is much more difficult to navigate the water, and catch food and all the other things related to survival.
In any case, their will had no effect.. (as of today 🙂
A short and interesting article.
I also want to praise the writer who, unlike some other articles, also gives the reference (although here too it is possible to improve and point to a place a little more precise than PNAS - an excellent newspaper by all accounts).
To the point: it is impossible to know if this lizard really flies. It is possible that this was the beginning of the development of wings that kept growing for an unknown reason - which weighed too much on the lizard and it became extinct. I guess there are no shortage of animals who started some trend but failed to make its virtues outweigh its disadvantages. Let us not forget - this is a fossil. We don't know too much about him. Easy when it comes to the first fossil of its kind.
Ami
What caused the development of wings?
1. The lizard's desire to fly
2. Random development of the wings that the lizard used
fly
Another question is how did a dorsal fin develop on a whale I?
I can't find a scientific explanation for this.