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Posts Tagged ‘Pterosaur’

Powered flight, the ability to propel oneself through the air against the force of gravity, requires a great deal. From specialized bones to specialized skin, and everything in between, the demands of flight penetrate all aspects of an animals’ life. And yet, despite how mechanically difficult powered flight is to achieve, it has evolved three different times in vertebrate evolution, once in birds, once in bats, and once in the now extinct pterosaurs. One of the things that make the three different evolutions of flight especially interesting is that the three different groups accomplished the feat is such different ways.

A pterosaur wing has a large upper arm bone, two smaller forearm bones, a few wrist bones, and then four fingers. The first three are small fingers that have small claws at their tips and are free to move and grasp objects. The fourth finger is extremely long, extending all the way to the tip of the wing. The bones of this fourth finger are longer and thicker than the bones of the other fingers, and this is because this fourth finger supports the entire wing membrane. The wing membrane attaches all along the rear surface of the fourth finger, the rear surface of the arm, and then to the side of the trunk of the animal and even to the leading edge of the hind legs. That means that, when a pterosaur is in flight, the whole weight of the animal is being supported on once finger of each hand! Some pterosaurs got to an estimated 550 lbs (although most were about 25 lbs) with a 10 or 11 meter wingspan, so those are some strong fourth fingers!

A bat wing is the same upper arm bones of the pterosaur, but the hand is very different. Instead of supporting al the body weight of the animal on just one finger, all five of the fingers of a bat are elongated (the thumb is the only finger that is small and clawed and free to grasp). In between each of these fingers, and extending from the pinky finger to the body are membranes that the bat can stretch or fold as needed by moving the bones in its fingers, hands, and arm. Since all the fingers are sharing the load, each one is proportionately much finer and thinner than the fourth finger of a pterosaur. Additionally, bats have thin muscles that cover the surfaces of the membranes just beneath the skin. By tensing or relaxing these muscles, the bat has very fine control over the sharp and tension of the wing membranes, and this turns out to be very important in bat flight. It is not known if pterosaurs had similar muscles on the membranes of their wings, but it seems likely that they did.

A bird wing also has the same basic upper arm bones seen in the other groups, but instead of elongating bones and making them delicate and distinct, birds go the opposite direction. Most of the bones in the hand and fingers of a bird are fused together. This makes a structure that is short, thick, and strong. Out of this support structure extends feathers. Not a membrane made of skin like a pterosaur or a bat, but a completely different evolutionary innovation. Feathers, and flight feathers in particular, are strong and thin and light. Flexible enough to bend a bit to change shape, but rigid enough to support the weight of the bird and the forces of air-speed, drag, lift and gravity that all flying organisms have to contend with. In modern birds, muscles in the skin at the base of the feathers allow for independent control of each feather. This allows birds to have amazing control over the shape of their wing.

Flight is a fascinating example of how a complex structure or function can arise by natural selection. In these three cases, natural selection favored three very different, and ultimately successful, experiments in how to get an animal airborne. All three were very different solutions, which is worth remembering. Most of the problems out there, even really hard ones, probably have many different solutions, you just have to tinker and figure them out.

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