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Angels seem to have six limbs: arms, legs and wings. No matter they’re, then, they’re in all probability not vertebrates, I.e., animals like us with a spinal twine enclosed in a spine.
A superfluity of appendages
No residing or fossil vertebrate has greater than 4 limbs. Whales and snakes, amongst others, have deserted some or all exterior limbs, however no identified vertebrate has ever added any. Even fish, which have all types of exterior constructions for locomotion and/or stabilization, are constructed round a primary 4-limb bauplan (physique plan) of paired pectoral (shoulder) and pelvic (hip) fins.
It might be that 4 is the final optimum variety of limbs-enough to get the job performed; not so many as to squander vitality within the growing fetus or in sensible use. Doubtless it’s a principally incidental consequence of getting developed from an ancestor constructed across the 4-limb construction, which, in most vertebrates as we speak, seems as 4 legs. Some teams have modified forelimbs into both arms (primates) or wings (bats, birds), however no species has each… or they would not have a leg to face on.
As the images all present, nevertheless, angels seem to have completely competent arms in addition to feathered wings rising from their shoulder girdles. It is exhausting to determine how a creature may have gotten there (angels) from right here (the vertebrate 4-limb physique plan).
These wings will not work
Evolution is basically a bricoleur, in throwing up new species it makes do with what’s already in its device equipment relatively than designing from scratch. All of the principal present physique plans date again to the Cambrian Explosion of 530 mya (million years in the past). Arthropods produce probably the most limbs, starting from roughly 14-limbed bugs (guess you thought they solely had six; a number of of their mouthparts are literally modified limbs) to many tons of, even approaching 1000 on a really previous millipede, but it surely’s not ‘exhausting’ for them so as to add limbs. They do it by multiplying physique segments, every of which produces a pair of ‘limbs’: antennae, jaws, wings, legs.
Vertebrates are usually not segmented like arthropods, nevertheless, and moreover, angel wings violate the vertebrate physique plan in a extra important approach than merely number-they apparently connect to the dorsal (again) aspect of the shoulder (pectoral) girdle. Test it out: all vertebrate arms, legs, wings, fins connect to the ventral (stomach) aspect of the pectoral and pelvic girdles. The place would highly effective flight muscle groups connect: how would they be stabilized. A vertebrate flapping wings like an angel’s would torque its backbone into an unholy mess.
It is one or the opposite
And a 3rd factor! Depictions present angels with feathered wings however lengthy silky hair. No residing species varieties each hair and feathers. In fact, Gabriel’s flowing locks would possibly probably not be hair, however the form of lengthy, mushy, principally unbarbed feathers known as filoplumes, thought to play sensory and/or ornamental roles in birds. Filoplumes could sense the place of contour (physique) feathers in order that they are often stored correctly aligned, they could play a job in offering physique consciousness in flight, they could make birds extra engaging to the other intercourse. If Raphael’s filoplumes had been certainly misconstrued for tresses, one wonders how angels make use of them.
In fact, hair and feathers are usually not options that fossilize properly, so it is potential that someplace on the market, simply ready to be discovered (or maybe already discovered and mistaken for a feathered dinosaur?) is a furry, fluffy multi-limbed fossil of the vertebrate/angel final frequent ancestor. One may in all probability higher spend ones time looking for the Misplaced Ark of the Covenant. Oh, wait. That is in some dusty U.S. authorities warehouse, is not it? Or, was it a church in Ethiopia?
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Source by Nathaniel Wander, PhD