feathers the evolution of a natural miracle

Feathers presents an easy way in to the standard model of bird and feather evolution.

Great battles have been fought over these issues and Hanson recounts some of them, but in the last decade a series of fossil finds in China has helped clear up many of the mysteries. The principal gene involved in this magic turns out to be the same one that tells your eyes how far apart to be, and how to grow a thumb on one side and a little finger on the other: nature's master sculptor, whimsically named Sonic Hedgehog after the video game.įeathers are at the heart of two of evolution's greatest mysteries: first, how could such an intricate structure have evolved and for what original purpose? And second, how did flight evolve? They are not the same question: bats fly, but they have no feathers. All this has to be cast in a single process. Bird feather keratin is similarly extruded from a follicle, but it is structured so that the barbs radiating from the central quill are held together by tiny Velcro-like fasteners.

But a hair is simply a string of dead protein fibres squeezed from the follicle, like glue from a nozzle. That's the stuff that nails, hair and horse's hooves are made from. His enthusiasm is infectious and his subject so alluring that many science writers will be wondering: 'Why didn't I think of that?'įeathers are the most complicated artefact fashioned by nature from a single substance: the protein keratin. He is an engaging nature nut, the kind of guy who keeps dead roadkill in his freezer and is never happier than when yomping through the wild, interrogating all he sees. Hanson is a young, independent conservation biologist, operating from an island northwest of Seattle.

Feathers the evolution of a natural miracle