[QUOTE][B]By simply inserting a piece of mica between the developing tibia and fibula of a chick embryo, Armand Hamp produced an Archaeopteryx-like leg , with not only a fibula fully to the ankle, but separate tarsals, as well as muscular adaptations required to make the limb fully functional.[/QUOTE]
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Oh dear, somebody call PETA. Seriously, that's quite amazing. Did the chick survive to maturity? But just to double-check, are you sure that *teeth* were produced in the earlier example? I have heard about tooth *sockets* produced in chicks that had a particular signalling pathway activated.
[QUOTE][B]Here, better than any other, is a true "macroevolutionary change" - or as close to it as you're likely to see in under a few million years - produced in the lab, simply by manipulating existing genetic instructions.[/QUOTE]
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Interesting things happen in nature as well. Wing claws appear regularly on hatchlings of some species and fall off with maturity. In other cases the wing claws appear on adult birds, some species are more prone to the oddity than others.
From Corliss'
Biological Anomalies: Birds, pp. 71-71, topic BBA19 X2.
[QUOTE][B]All animals will on rare occasions display atavisms or characteristics left over from their evolutionary predecessors. Once in a great while, for example, a human will be born with a fleshy tail. (BHA53 in
Humans I) So, too, some birds that do not normally show wing claws will be found with these leftovers discarded in evolution's progress. Our literature researchers have turned up four such atavisms. There must be many more.
quote:
Bobolink (R1)
Red-winged Blackbird (R8)
White-necked crow (R7)
Great Kiskadee (R6)
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R1 is Coale, Henry K.; "Ornithological Curiosities---A Hawk with Nine Toes, and a Bobolink with Spurs on its Wings,"
Auk 4:331, 1887
R8 is Nero, Robert W.; "Vestigial Claws on the Wings of the Red-Winged Blackbird,"
Auk, 74:262, 1957
R7 is Baumel, Julian J.; "Wing Claws in the White-Necked Crow (
Corvus leucognaphalus)."
Auk, 70:373, 1953.
R6 is Friedmann, Herbert; "Vestigial Claws in the Wings of the Kiskadee Flycatcher,"
Auk, 69:200, 1952.
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