Flying animals evolved independently four times in the history of life on Earth: in insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats. Insect flight may have evolved much earlier, in the Devonian period. Flying animals vary widely in size, from the tiny fairy wasp to the massive extinct pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus.
There are a variety of types of aerial locomotion in the animal kingdom, including parachuting, gliding, flying, and soaring, all of which require distinct adaptations. Many microorganisms can “fly” because the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere allow some tiny particles to hang aloft without lift.
True flying animals evolved independently four times in the history of life on Earth: in insects (early Carboniferous, 350 million years ago, Order Protodonata), in pterosaurs (late Triassic, 228 million years ago), in birds ( late Jurassic, 155 million years ago). ago, Archaeopteryx) and bats (Lower Paleocene, 55 million years ago, Onychonycteris). So the gap between the evolution of flying animals was 122 million, 73 million and 100 million years respectively, an average of about once every 100 million years.
Insect flight may have actually evolved much earlier, in the Devonian period. The earliest fossil insect, Rhyniognatha hirsti, estimated to be 396-407 million years old, had dichondylic mandibles, a feature associated with flying insects. Thus, this insect may have had wings or evolved from those that did. At the time, insects were the only non-microscopic land animals and they had a complete ecosystem in which to diversify.
Flying animals evolve incrementally from gliding animals. Gliding independently has many more times than flying and includes different animals such as flying squirrels, flying frogs, Draco lizards, and various small mammals. For a flying animal to evolve successfully, it must minimize its weight, develop wings and the muscles to use them. Flying can be a rather advantageous adaptation, as it allows animals to cover much more ground and avoid flightless predators with ease. Post-insect flying animals evolved primarily to exploit the sheer number of flying insects as a largely untapped food source.
Flying animals vary widely in size, from the tiny 0.139mm fairy, a wasp, to the massive extinct pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus, with a 10-11m (33-36ft) wingspan, about three times longer than a typical automobile. Until recently, the largest known flying animal was Pteranodon, a pterosaur with a wingspan of up to 7.5 m (24.6 ft). Pteranodon was thought to be as large as the biomechanics of flight would allow, but this barrier was broken by Quetzalcoatlus. There may be even larger flying animals in the fossil strata, although it’s certainly hard to imagine.
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