[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.   
   >   
   Yep. A new mass extinction such as happened due to the   
   Chicxulub impact would qualify, and they tend to happen   
   repeatedly (although not exactly often). The resulting empty   
   ecological niches would qualify as a "challenge" such as I   
   mentioned, just as happened at the K-T Boundary.   
   >   
   --   
      
   Bob C.   
      
   "The most exciting phrase to hear in science,   
    the one that heralds new discoveries, is not   
    'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"   
      
   - Isaac Asimov   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)