I meant fully-functional in that they could extend and even be flapped. You're right, though. If they're not functional for flight, they can't properly be described as fully-functional.
I don't agree that they'd necessarily be a neutral mutation. On the positive side, maybe chicks would dig guys with bat wings growing out of their upper back. On the other side, it's additional body mass that would have to be maintained and which would slow the person down when running from a sabre-toothed tiger (who might just be "in a mood for some wings").
I don't agree that they'd necessarily be a neutral mutation. On the positive side, maybe chicks would dig guys with bat wings growing out of their upper back. On the other side, it's additional body mass that would have to be maintained and which would slow the person down when running from a sabre-toothed tiger (who might just be "in a mood for some wings").
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
