Evolution is not always a process of gradual change. Shifts in entire body shapes, leading to the foundation of whole new groups of animals or plants, sometimes take place. These involve the near-simultaneous alteration of many body parts and it is rare for the fossil record to catch such palaeolycanthropes in mid-shape-shift, as it were. Lu Junchang of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues, however, think that they may have done so in the case of a newly discovered flying reptile called Darwinopterus modularis.
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