"Indeed, as we'll see a little later, perhaps the most important lesson we can learn from what we know of our own origins involves the significance of what has in recent years increasingly been term 'exaptation'. This is a useful name for characteristics that arise in one context before being exploited in another, or for the process by which such novelties are adopted in populations. The classic example of exaptation becoming adaptation is birds' feathers. These structures are essential nowadays to bird flight, but for millions of years before flight...they were apparently used simply as insulators... . For a long time, then, feathers were highly useful adaptations for maintaining body temperatures. As adjuncts to flight, on the other hand, they were simple exaptations until, much later, they began to assume an adaptive role in this new function, too. There are many other similar examples, enough that we can't ignore the possibility that maybe our vaunted cognitive capacities originated rather as feathers did: as a very much humbler feature than they became, perhaps only marginally useful, or even as a by-product of something else."
"The Monkey In The Mirror" Ian Tattersall
THE DECONSTRUCTION RESURRECTION
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