When did wings first evolve?

But the first animals to fly by flapping are very much older than birds, pterosaurs or bats, and first took to the air about 400 million years ago: insects. Unlike birds and bats, insect wings didn’t evolve from existing “arms”.

How did animals evolve to have wings?

The other, known as the cursorial theory, posits that flight arose in small, bipedal terrestrial theropod dinosaurs that sped along the ground with arms outstretched and leaped into the air while pursuing prey or evading predators. Feathers on their forelimbs enhanced lift, thereby allowing the creatures to take wing.

What type of evolution is wings?

Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution: Convergent evolution occurs when two organisms that lack a recent common ancestor end up more and more alike as they adapt to a similar ecological niche. The organisms have convergent phenotypes, and their similar structural forms are called analogous structures (such as bird wings and bat wings).

Where did the first fly come from?

They are thought to have originated in the southern Palearctic region, particularly the Middle East. Because of their close, commensal relationship with humans, they probably owe their worldwide dispersal to co-migration with humans.

How did the first bird learn to fly?

For 150 years, since Darwin published, scientists have known that modern birds evolved from dinosaurs and that wings and flight had to evolve from that starting point. Ornithologists developed the idea that early bird ancestors climbed up trees or slopes and then glided to the ground a distance away.

What was the first organism to fly?

Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrate creatures to evolve powered flight and conquer the air—long before birds took wing. They prevailed for more than 160 million years before vanishing along with the nonbird dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago.

How are the wings of bats and birds an example of convergent evolution?

Birds and bats have homologous limbs because they are both ultimately derived from terrestrial tetrapods, but their flight mechanisms are only analogous, so their wings are examples of functional convergence. The two groups have powered flight, evolved independently. Their wings differ substantially in construction.

What caused this type of evolution to occur?

New traits can also come from transfer of genes between populations, as in migration, or between species, in horizontal gene transfer. Evolution occurs when these heritable differences become more common or rare in a population, either non-randomly through natural selection or randomly through genetic drift.

What is the evolution of the fly?

The March fly branched off some 175 million years ago, while the common house fly branched off about 50 million years ago. Flies originated in wet environments and as they evolved they adapted to feed in almost any nutrient-rich substrate in almost any environment on earth.