Page 260 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

258 The Origin of Birds and Flight

fossil dragonfly has exactly the same wing structure and characteristics
as living specimens.
Other flying insects such as the housefly, which pose still more
dilemmas for evolutionists, appear in the same fossil strata as other
species of wingless insects. This demolishes the claim that winged in-
sects evolved from wingless ones. In their book Biomechanics in Evolution,
Robin Wootton and Charles P. Ellington write:
When insect fossils first appear, in the Middle and Upper
Carboniferous, they are diverse and for
the most part fully winged. There
are a few primitively wingless
forms, but no convincing in-
termediates are known. 229

A fossil dragonfly, called Meganeura,
dating back to the Late
Carboniferous (306 million years), is
identical to specimens alive today.