[_ Old Earth _] How many times does the same thing 'evolve independently'?

[Asyncritus]

I'm starting this thread in the hope, no, confident expectation, that others will come up with examples of the same thing 'evolving independently' many times over.

As if!

Here to start the ball rolling, is a comment from the New Scientist (I'm getting quite fond of this rag):

Similarly, for some groups of animals it's easy to stop laying eggs and start giving birth to live young. Backboned animals have evolved live birth no fewer than 132 times, :toofunny and nowadays a fifth of lizards and snakes give birth. Human mothers may disagree, but live birth is clearly not that difficult.


What is difficult, however, is nourishing unborn young the way mammals do. A female mammal allows each embryo to burrow deep into the wall of her womb, where it takes nutrients straight from her blood. This intimate arrangement was long thought to have only evolved once, in mammals.


Not so. It now appears that it evolved at least twice: once in mammals, and once in an obscure African lizard called Trachylepis ivensii.


Now let me get this straight. Did the lizard evolve from the mammals, or did the mammals evolve from the lizard????

 

[Asyncritus]

Just by the way, can you credit this junk?

ONCE upon a time, 3 billion years ago, there lived a single organism called LUCA. It was enormous: a mega-organism like none seen since, it filled the planet's oceans before splitting into three and giving birth to the ancestors of all living things on Earth today.:biglol:toofunny:toofunny:toofunny


This strange picture is emerging from efforts to pin down the last universal common ancestor - not the first life that emerged on Earth but the life form that gave rise to all others.


The latest results suggest LUCA was the result of early life's fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition - effectively creating a global mega-organism.


It was around 2.9 billion years ago that LUCA split into the three domains of life: the single-celled bacteria and archaea, and the more complex eukaryotes that gave rise to animals and plants (see timeline). It's hard to know what happened before the split. Hardly any fossil evidence remains from this time, and any genes that date that far back are likely to have mutated beyond recognition.

Come back Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. Pleeeeezeee!

All is definitely forgiven. Gladly!

 

[lordkalvan]

Just by the way, can you credit this junk?



Come back Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen. Pleeeeezeee!

All is definitely forgiven. Gladly!

Do you actually have anything in the way of reasoned argument to offer, or do you simply wish to point and laugh on the basis of your own personal incredulity and apparent ignorance of evolutionary theory and its postulates? I only ask because you seem unwilling to engage in reasoned discussion of points arising from your various posts on the many threads you have started.

 

[Asyncritus]

Do you actually have anything in the way of reasoned argument to offer, or do you simply wish to point and laugh on the basis of your own personal incredulity and apparent ignorance of evolutionary theory and it's postulates? I only ask because you seem unwilling to engage in reasoned discussion of points ar using from your various posts on the many threads you have started.

Look LK, just do a small calculation for us.

Make as many simplifying assumptions as you like, and calculate the probability of mammalian live birth having evolved from whatever you choose.

Now calculate the probability of this having happened 132 times INDEPENDENTLY.

That would give your refutation some 'scientific' basis - but at the moment, it seems to me that the probabilities are laughably and monstrously against evolution.

Wouldn't you agree?

 

[lordkalvan]

Look LK, just do a small calculation for us.

Make as many simplifying assumptions as you like, and calculate the probability of mammalian live birth having evolved from whatever you choose.

Now calculate the probability of this having happened 132 times INDEPENDENTLY.

This is your argument from incredulity, so you should take the burden onto your own shoulders: please show us your evidence-base probability argument demonstrating that the appearance of mammals is evolutionarily impossible (as a defining trait of mammals is that they do give live birth, providing such negating evidence should be sufficient to establish your case).

That would give your refutation some 'scientific' basis - but at the moment, it seems to me that the probabilities are laughably and monstrously against evolution.

As you have offered no evidence concerning those alleged probabilities other than assertion from personal incredulity, there appears to be nothing to refute.

Wouldn't you agree?

No.

 

[jasoncran]

well then lk. show him empiracally and without any specalutation that it did indeed happen that way.

argumentum ad futurist isnt science. will happen in the future as your all like isnt science.

 

[lordkalvan]

well then lk. show him empiracally and without any specalutation that it did indeed happen that way.

Umm, it's his assertion (without any evidence at all), that it couldn't have so I rather think it's up to him to provide evidence-based argument for that assertion, Jason, not simply express personal incredulity as to something's impossibility, demand others provide evidence that it isn't, decide in advance that no such evidence is acceptable and then generally ignore arguments and points raised in respect of his various assertions that show they are poorly founded or rest on misrepresentations and/or ignorance.

argumentum ad futurist isnt science. will happen in the future as your all like isnt science.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Science in this instance is the study of naturalistic phenomena based on observable and measurable evidence around those phenomena and the construction (and testing) of hypotheses to help us better understand those phenomena. Asyncritus isn't offering us any science to look at, simply demanding that others accept his personal incredulity as sufficient grounds to invalidate any part of evolutionary theory that he doesn't like (which pretty much seems to be all of it). Attempting to refute this personal incredulity with reasoned argument and evidence is pointless as he has already effectively declared elsewhere that he regards all such argument and evidence as unacceptable.

 

[jasoncran]

Umm, it's his assertion (without any evidence at all), that it couldn't have so I rather think it's up to him to provide evidence-based argument for that assertion, Jason, not simply express personal incredulity as to something's impossibility, demand others provide evidence that it could, decide in advance that no such evidence is acceptable and then generally ignore arguments and points raised in respect of his various assertions that show they are poorly founded or rest on misrepresentations and or/ignorance.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Science in this instance is the study of naturalistic phenomena based on observable and measurable evidence around those phenomena and the construction (and testing) of hypotheses to help us better understand those phenomena. Asyncritus isn't offering us any science to look at, simply demanding that others accept his personal incredulity as sufficient grounds to invalidate any part of evolutionary theory that he doesn't like (which pretty much seems to be all of it). Attempting to refute this personal incredulity with reasoned argument and evidence is pointless as he has already effectively declared elsewhere that he regards all such argument and evidence as unacceptable.

he is saying that your theory cant happend based on improbalities. math and statistics do you believe that? that is what he gets that from.

if said that its fact that macro evolution occurs and then they the rate of it is once in every trillion years then its unobservable as we wont be able to test it.

that is what you all say and do.

i know men that were evos and left that theory on that alone.

and this part is the best from a bio student in australia who isnt a christian but doesnt buy the toe.

his own professor told him this.

many scientists lack the critical thinking skills to critically analyze their own experiments for flaws

so that you see that i am not quote mining from this site which i am a member of and they are more up to task to challenge your position.


http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=4654

 

[lordkalvan]

he is saying that your theory cant happend based on improbalities. math and statistics do you believe that? that is what he gets that from.

I 'get' what he says, but simply saying it and demanding others refute his assertion is not an argument that demonstrates any soundness in and of itself. If he says the theory is impossible on the basis of improbabilities, maths and statistics, he has to present an argument to support this (using probabilities, maths and statistics) and thus present the foundations of his argument for consideration.

if said that its fact that macro evolution occurs and then they the rate of it is once in every trillion years then its unobservable as we wont be able to test it.

Where do you get these figures? Speciation is an observed event and many creationists appear to accept the actuality of microevolution if not macroevolution, so I am not clear what your argument is.

that is what you all say and do.

Who says this?

i know men that were evos and left that theory on that alone.

I don't know any 'evolutionists' who think that macroevolution takes trillions of years. There are creationists who clearly believe microevolution on a grand scale can take place in thousands of years, however.

and this part is the best from a bio student in australia who isnt a christian but doesnt buy the toe.

his own professor told him this.

And this constitutes a critique of evolutionary theory how, exactly?

so that you see that i am not quote mining from this site which i am a member of and they are more up to task to challenge your position.

My only position at the moment is that the OP contains no evidence-based argument to support its contention, but simply demands that it be disproved.

 

[Barbarian]

What is difficult, however, is nourishing unborn young the way mammals do. A female mammal allows each embryo to burrow deep into the wall of her womb, where it takes nutrients straight from her blood. This intimate arrangement was long thought to have only evolved once, in mammals.


Not so. It now appears that it evolved at least twice: once in mammals, and once in an obscure African lizard called Trachylepis ivensii.

Well, pretty close, anyway. It's a lot like the mammalian system, but not quite. It is, as the author points out, unique.

Further, the pattern of fetal membrane development (with successive loss and re-establishment of an extensive choriovitelline membrane) is unique among vertebrates. T. ivensi represents a new extreme in placental specializations of reptiles, and is the most striking case of convergence on the developmental features of viviparous mammals known.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmor.11011/full

In mammals, it's the chorionic membrane, not a choriovitelline membrane that forms the contact with the maternal blood supply.

More like the convergence of bat wings and bird wings.

Since it has such a strong survival value, it's a little surprising it hasn't happened more often. But then, the "docking" process is complicated, and no doubt is why it so rarely evolves.

Now let me get this straight. Did the lizard evolve from the mammals, or did the mammals evolve from the lizard????

Neither. As you see, they each went their own way.

 

[lordkalvan]

...Neither. As you see, they each went their own way.

Given that the OP is about independent (or perhaps convergent) evolutionary phenomena, what is puzzling to me is that the question was asked at all.

 

[Asyncritus]

This is your argument from incredulity, so you should take the burden onto your own shoulders: please show us your evidence-base probability argument demonstrating that the appearance of mammals is evolutionarily impossible (as a defining trait of mammals is that they do give live birth, providing such negating evidence should be sufficient to establish your case).

I asked you to perform a simple calculation, making whatever assumptions you like.

What is the probability of live birth evolving (presumably from non- mammals, with non-live birth) 132 times INDEPENDENTLY.

Just to remind you, if the probability of this happening once, is 1 in 10, then the probability of its occurring 132 times INDEPENDENTLY, is 1 in 10^132.

Now 1 in 10^40 is impossible, and statistically monstrous. 1 in 10 exp 132 is totally ridiculous. The number of atoms in the known universe is, if I recall correctly, 10 exp 80. So 10 exp 132 is way beyond that number.

As you have offered no evidence concerning those alleged probabilities other than assertion from personal incredulity, there appears to be nothing to refute.

And you're happy with that 'explanation', 'refutation' or whatever you choose to call it? Well, God bless you in your darkness.

 

[Asyncritus]

More like the convergence of bat wings and bird wings.

Really Barbarian.

Are you adding to my list of things which 'evolved independently'?

Just think about this one - and if your staunch evolutionist heart doesn't tremble a little at this fact, then I will have to conclude that you have no sense at all.

FLIGHT 'EVOLVED INDEPENDENTLY' FOUR SEPARATE TIMES.

In the bats, birds, insects and pterosaurs.

Now here's the riddle: each kind of flying machine is totally different to the others.

So let's do a little calculation as you are so strong in mathematics.

What is the probability of flight having evolved once from non-flying organisms?

I'd say pretty small - let's say 1 in 100,000 for the sake of argument.

To evolve 4 times, INDEPENDENTLY, that's 1 in 10000 exp 4, which is: 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Kind of small isn't it? I wouldn't risk a penny on a horse with those odds against its winning. Would you?

So I would say, you're backing a dead horse here.

Save your money, and get out of the race.

 

[lordkalvan]

Really Barbarian.

Are you adding to my list of things which 'evolved independently'?

And what's so surprising about that?

Just think about this one - and if your staunch evolutionist heart doesn't tremble a little at this fact, then I will have to conclude that you have no sense at all.

FLIGHT 'EVOLVED INDEPENDENTLY' FOUR SEPARATE TIMES.

In the bats, birds, insects and pterosaurs.

Why do you find this so remarkable?

Now here's the riddle: each kind of flying machine is totally different to the others.

Totally? The morphological differences amongst bird, bat and pterosaur wings are ones of degree only. The pterosaur wing is supported by an elongated fourth digit, i.e. by a finger-bone, and by the radius, humerus and ulna. The bat wing is supported by four digits of the hand and by the radius, humerus and ulna. The bird wing is supported by the radius, humerus and ulna, modified wrist bones and also the second digit of the hand. In other words, the development of flying limbs from the forelimbs of pterosaurs, avians and chiroptera demonstrates morphological similarities through the adaptation of the same bones that you can find in all vertebrates. This has been pointed out to you before, but you seem to have forgotten it. Or maybe you just hoped everybody else had.

So let's do a little calculation as you are so strong in mathematics.

What is the probability of flight having evolved once from non-flying organisms?

I'd say pretty small - let's say 1 in 100,000 for the sake of argument.

Your argument is specious as you offer no grounds other than your personal incredulity as to why the probability would be so small. Flying is no more unlikely from an evolutionary point of view than not-flying, and given the wide variety of near-flying organisms (from gliding ants, through parachuting spiders, flying squids, various flying fish species, gliding frogs, gliding lizards, gliding snakes, gliding possums, gliding squirrels - the list is almost endless), the sources from which flying might originate evolutionarily seem to give the lie to the figure you appear to have picked quite randomly simply to validate your a priori conclusion.

To evolve 4 times, INDEPENDENTLY, that's 1 in 10000 exp 4, which is: 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Kind of small isn't it? I wouldn't risk a penny on a horse with those odds against its winning. Would you?

So I would say, you're backing a dead horse here.

Save your money, and get out of the race.

Looks more like a case of garbage in, garbage out as the basis of your argument. I could as well argue that, if an ecological niche exists that can be more effectively and advantageously exploited by animals that can fly, then the probability of flying animals evolving to exploit that niche is unity. The only restriction on their evolution will be the success (or lack of it) with which individual species 'defend' their niches against competitors (mass extinction and other catastrophic events aside).

 

[Barbarian]

FLIGHT 'EVOLVED INDEPENDENTLY' FOUR SEPARATE TIMES.
In the bats, birds, insects and pterosaurs.

Now here's the riddle: each kind of flying machine is totally different to the others.

Three of them use vertebrate forelimbs. Two of them use skin stretched over the bones to make an airfoil/propelling organ. It seems foolish to argue they are "totally different", all having the same basic set-up. Insect flight is different; I showed you the evidence of evolution of insect flight before. Would you like me to show you again?

So let's do a little calculation as you are so strong in mathematics.
What is the probability of flight having evolved once from non-flying organisms?
I'd say pretty small - let's say 1 in 100,000 for the sake of argument.

But just for the sake of argument, you'll have to justify that number. Do that first, and we'll go on.

To evolve 4 times, INDEPENDENTLY, that's 1 in 10000 exp 4, which is: 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Which would be like saying that if one group of people living in a river valley built boats (probability n), the likelihood of four groups of people building them would be n to the fourth power. That's a pretty silly misuse of statistics, isn't it? Your calculation works for random events, but as you learned, natural selection is not random.

However, even your calculations give us a probability much higher than getting a particular order in a deck of shuffled cards. And yet it always happens.

Better yet, consider the odds of you, given the genomes of your great-great-grandparents. You are even less likely, much less likely than your estimate of the likelihood of flight evolving four times.

And yet here you are, having "proven" that you and flight are impossible. It seems to me that there's a flaw in your argument, somewhere...

 

[Jam]

So let's do a little calculation as you are so strong in mathematics.

What is the probability of flight having evolved once from non-flying organisms?

I'd say pretty small - let's say 1 in 100,000 for the sake of argument.

To evolve 4 times, INDEPENDENTLY, that's 1 in 10000 exp 4, which is: 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Kind of small isn't it? I wouldn't risk a penny on a horse with those odds against its winning. Would you?

Have you ever studied statistics? What do you mean the probability of it evolving once from non-flying organisms? Do you mean the probability that, at a specific moment in time, a mutation that "causes" flight will take place in an animal that, as of yet, does not fly? You need to be more specific. Simply saying "the probability is this" meanings nothing statistically, so I'll assume you meant the aforementioned value.

Now, I've only taken a few courses in statistics, but I think it makes sense to model this probability distribution as a binomial: the events can be modelled as independent, having only two outcomes, having a constant probability of occurrence and having a fixed amount of time in which they can take place.

To make this simpler, let's just look at the probability of flight occurring in the world's population of insects in a given time interval. 10,000 years, shall we say? We could model a "moment" as the Planck time (~10⁻⁴³ s), but I doubt that it could happen in such a short time. So shall we scale that down 20 orders of magnitude for you, and call an "instant" 10⁻²³ s? So, the number of times that our event could occur is 10²³ x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 x 10,000 ≈ 3 x 10³⁴. However, this is assuming that there is only one insect in existence in a given time. It has been estimated, though, that there are ~10¹⁶ in existence at any one time. So, this now leaves us with the number of moments at which the mutation could occur as 3 x 10⁵⁰.

Let's go:

X~B(10⁵⁰,10⁻⁵)
P(X≥4)
= 1 - P(X[FONT=&quot]≤3)
= 1 - {([/FONT]10⁵⁰C0)(10⁻⁵)⁰(1-10⁻⁵)^10⁵⁰} - {(10⁵⁰C1)(10⁻⁵)¹(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-1)} - {(10⁵⁰C2)(10⁻⁵)²(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-2)} - {(10⁵⁰C3)(10⁻⁵)³(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-3)}
≈ 1 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
= 1


That's interesting... it appears that flight will evolve almost surely in at least four different insects in only 10,000 years. As it turns out, I think your estimate for the probability was much too high, but even with an absurdly low probability of it happening once at one moment, the event is very likely to happen!


Please don't misquote statistics, or quote statistics and then make irrelevant calculations to show your point.

 

[lordkalvan]

Have you ever studied statistics? What do you mean the probability of it evolving once from non-flying organisms? Do you mean the probability that, at a specific moment in time, a mutation that "causes" flight will take place in an animal that, as of yet, does not fly? You need to be more specific. Simply saying "the probability is this" meanings nothing statistically, so I'll assume you meant the aforementioned value.

Now, I've only taken a few courses in statistics, but I think it makes sense to model this probability distribution as a binomial: the events can be modelled as independent, having only two outcomes, having a constant probability of occurrence and having a fixed amount of time in which they can take place.

To make this simpler, let's just look at the probability of flight occurring in the world's population of insects in a given time interval. 10,000 years, shall we say? We could model a "moment" as the Planck time (~10⁻⁴³ s), but I doubt that it could happen in such a short time. So shall we scale that down 20 orders of magnitude for you, and call an "instant" 10⁻²³ s? So, the number of times that our event could occur is 10²³ x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 x 10,000 ≈ 3 x 10³⁴. However, this is assuming that there is only one insect in existence in a given time. It has been estimated, though, that there are ~10¹⁶ in existence at any one time. So, this now leaves us with the number of moments at which the mutation could occur as 3 x 10⁵⁰.

Let's go:

X~B(10⁵⁰,10⁻⁵)
P(X≥4)
= 1 - P(X[FONT=&quot]≤3)
= 1 - {([/FONT]10⁵⁰C0)(10⁻⁵)⁰(1-10⁻⁵)^10⁵⁰} - {(10⁵⁰C1)(10⁻⁵)¹(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-1)} - {(10⁵⁰C2)(10⁻⁵)²(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-2)} - {(10⁵⁰C3)(10⁻⁵)³(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-3)}
≈ 1 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
= 1


That's interesting... it appears that flight will evolve almost surely in at least four different insects in only 10,000 years. As it turns out, I think your estimate for the probability was much too high, but even with an absurdly low probability of it happening once at one moment, the event is very likely to happen!


Please don't misquote statistics, or quote statistics and then make irrelevant calculations to show your point.

Most interesting to see that your statistical analysis seems to confirm my seat-of-the-pants suspicion that, given the right conditions, the development of flight is virtually evolutionarily inevitable.

 

[Jam]

Most interesting to see that your statistical analysis seems to confirm my seat-of-the-pants suspicion that, given the right conditions, the development of flight is virtually evolutionarily inevitable.

Oh please don't quote that as a demonstration that flight was sure to evolve! I was simply trying to demonstrate how flawed and misrepresentative Asyncritus' statistical work was. I'd think in reality the chance of flight evolving in an individual at a moment is far less than the 10⁻⁵ that Asyncritus posted, and the mutation could take longer than 10⁻²³s (I don't actually have a clue how long it would take). Regardless, the probability of the evolution is still waaay higher than Asyncritus seems to think- indeed, I just repeated the calculation modelling an "instant" as 10,000 years (so each insect would only have one chance for the right gene(s) to mutate in our 10,000-year trial), and the probability was still absurdly close to 1 (in fact, given that it rounds to 1 at eleven decimal places, 0.99999999999>P>1).

So yeah what I'm saying is not to trust calculations until we know we have the right values;) My calculations don't show the right probability; they simply show that Asyncritus is wrong.

 

[lordkalvan]

Oh please don't quote that as a demonstration that flight was sure to evolve! I was simply trying to demonstrate how flawed and misrepresentative Asyncritus' statistical work was. I'd think in reality the chance of flight evolving in an individual at a moment is far less than the 10⁻⁵ that Asyncritus posted, and the mutation could take longer than 10⁻²³s (I don't actually have a clue how long it would take). Regardless, the probability of the evolution is still waaay higher than Asyncritus seems to think- indeed, I just repeated the calculation modelling an "instant" as 10,000 years (so each insect would only have one chance for the right gene(s) to mutate in our 10,000-year trial), and the probability was still absurdly close to 1 (in fact, given that it rounds to 1 at eleven decimal places, 0.99999999999>P>1).

So yeah what I'm saying is not to trust calculations until we know we have the right values;) My calculations don't show the right probability; they simply show that Asyncritus is wrong.

My apologies. I did not mean to imply your theoretical example was proof of the evolutionary inevitability of flight, but rather that, given evolutionary processes and the availability of ecological niches, flight would be just as likely to develop as not. My bad for poor wording in my comment.

 

[Asyncritus]

Have you ever studied statistics? What do you mean the probability of it evolving once from non-flying organisms? Do you mean the probability that, at a specific moment in time, a mutation that "causes" flight will take place in an animal that, as of yet, does not fly? You need to be more specific. Simply saying "the probability is this" meanings nothing statistically, so I'll assume you meant the aforementioned value.

Now, I've only taken a few courses in statistics, but I think it makes sense to model this probability distribution as a binomial: the events can be modelled as independent, having only two outcomes, having a constant probability of occurrence and having a fixed amount of time in which they can take place.

To make this simpler, let's just look at the probability of flight occurring in the world's population of insects in a given time interval. 10,000 years, shall we say? We could model a "moment" as the Planck time (~10⁻⁴³ s), but I doubt that it could happen in such a short time. So shall we scale that down 20 orders of magnitude for you, and call an "instant" 10⁻²³ s? So, the number of times that our event could occur is 10²³ x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 x 10,000 ≈ 3 x 10³⁴. However, this is assuming that there is only one insect in existence in a given time. It has been estimated, though, that there are ~10¹⁶ in existence at any one time. So, this now leaves us with the number of moments at which the mutation could occur as 3 x 10⁵⁰.

Let's go:

X~B(10⁵⁰,10⁻⁵)
P(X≥4)
= 1 - P(X[FONT=&quot]≤3)
= 1 - {([/FONT]10⁵⁰C0)(10⁻⁵)⁰(1-10⁻⁵)^10⁵⁰} - {(10⁵⁰C1)(10⁻⁵)¹(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-1)} - {(10⁵⁰C2)(10⁻⁵)²(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-2)} - {(10⁵⁰C3)(10⁻⁵)³(1-10⁻⁵)^(10⁵⁰-3)}
≈ 1 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
= 1

That's interesting... it appears that flight will evolve almost surely in at least four different insects in only 10,000 years. As it turns out, I think your estimate for the probability was much too high, but even with an absurdly low probability of it happening once at one moment, the event is very likely to happen!

I was merely being conservative. I think it is totally impossible for flight to have 'evolved' at all. Not all the statistical fudging in the world will conceal the fact of it's biological impossibility.

Now you know (I hope) that 4 independent events occurring, each with a probability of 1 in 100,000, has a joint probability of 1 in (100,000) exp 4. Which is the figure I quoted.

The 4 refers to the 4 different kinds of flying organisms.

If the probability I quoted is, as you say (and I think you're correct) too high, then perhaps 1 in 10,000,000 is more correct. Now 1 in (10,000,000)exp 4 is impossibly small, and the hypothesis should be abandoned.

Now if you wish to make things even more impossible, consider the number if individual flying insect species, bird species, bat species and pterosaur species, all of which had to evolve at some point in time.

If they 'evolved' independently, then who knows what the probability would become?

Care to do another calculation?