"Walter Dnes (delete the 'z' to get my real address)" 
 wrote in news:c5abhg$21qo$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

(snip)

>   Having discovered flight and its survival value, water-birds were able
> to able to parlay their "underwater-flying" skills to aerial flight.
> Crash-landing in the water after getting one or two metres into the air
> is a lot less likely to kill/maim a bird than crash-landing on hard
> land. Landing on floating logs, and then on branches of floating logs
> will be the next step in acquiring tree-landing skills, without killing
> themselves if they don't do it exactly right the first time.
  


A problem with this hypothesis is that fluid mechanics in air and water are 
very different, because air is a compressible fluid while water is not. 
This means that structures and mechanics that work well in water may  not 
work particularly well in air. After being around for several hundred 
million years, there are no true flying fish - only gliders. And some birds 
that are very aquatic - penguins - don't fly. These criticisms don't 
disprove your hypothesis, but  if you are serious about your hypothesis, I 
think you need to address this question. 

Yours,

Bill Morse
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