[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>> That was pretty much my thought; while an exact "replay in   
   >>> reverse" would be essentially impossible, as you say there   
   >>> are multiple paths. All that would be required would be a   
   >>> re-creation of function, not an exact "reboot".   
   >>>   
   >>> As has been pointed out several times, a re-start at the   
   >>> original point would almost certainly (probability as close   
   >>> to zero as can be imagined) *not* follow the identical path   
   >>> resulting in the current species, but the same challenges   
   >>> should result in something similar.   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> By analogy, it's possible flightless birds could potentially re-evolve   
   >> functional flight, but the newly evolved structures would necessarily   
   >> be very different from those of extant flying birds.   
   >>   
   >   
   > flightless birds still have feathers, but they are more like the   
   > feathers dinos had in some cases.  In a lot of cases the wing feathers   
   > do not develop properly and are too short or the bird is now too heavy   
   > to fly.  You would not have to reevolve flight feathers, just redevelop   
   > flight functional feathers, and you would not have to do it by   
   > recreating what got broken, you could do it by taking a path similar to   
   > the one taken by dinos to evolve the flight capable feathers in the   
   > first place, but you already have flight feathers.  My take is that if   
   > the flighted birds went extinct that even ratites could reevolve flight   
   > using feathers, but they would have to reevolve the feather structure   
   > needed for flight.  They still have the basic capability, they just need   
   > to improve it like dinos did.  They would not have to do it in exactly   
   > the same way that dinos did it.  They all still have keels, as far as I   
   > know, so they would not have to reevolve that structure for flight   
   > muscle attachment.   
   >   
   > Ron Okimoto   
   >   
   >   
   As things stand right now, whales/dolphins would stand little chance of   
   coming back on land unless there were some new, unoccupied ecological   
   niche that didn't have something there already.  But consider a major   
   extinction event that wiped out most land vertebrates;  there'd be a   
   free-for-all, and it's hard to rule out anything.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)