Evolution Remodels the Old into New

...evolutionary change, even of a major sort, nearly always involves remodeling the old into the new. The legs of land animals are variations on the stout limbs of ancestral fish. The tiny middle ear bones of mammals are remodeled jawbones of their reptilian ancestors. The wings of birds were fashioned from the legs of dinosaurs. And whales are stretched-out land animals whose forelimbs have become paddles and whose nostrils have moved atop their head.

Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution Is True (January 22, 2009)

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