Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust

adaptation, aerodynamics, arboreal hypothesis, avian flight, birds, China, Chukar partridge, computer modelling, Confuciusornis, cursorial hypothesis, empirical data, Evolution, flapping, Flight, forelimb, Fossil Friday, fossil record, ichthyosaur, kinematics, Liaoning, mechanics, muscles, paleontology, powered flight, storytelling, WAIR hypothesis, wing-assisted incline running, wings
There is a long-running about whether birds first took off by running and flapping from the ground up, or whether they jumped as gliders from the tree down. Source
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New Scientist: Ichthyosaurs Evolved “Astonishingly Rapidly”

Cartorhynchus, cetaceans, Current Biology, Cymbospondylus youngorum, Darwinian gradualism, dolphins, Early Eocene, Evolution, Fossil Hill, fossil record, Frontiers in Earth Science, Günter Bechly, ichthyosaur, land mammals, Mesozoic, Neo-Darwinism, Nevada, New Scientist, Pakicetus, paleontology, Permian-Triassic extinction, porpoises, Science (journal), Sclerocormus, Tethys Sea, whales
This is a case of evolutionary biology trying to explain away the data that otherwise was not directly expected under their model. Source
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