'Tetrapteryx' & Microraptor Tote Bag

In 1915, ornithologist William Beebe examined the feathers on the legs of bird embryos and predicted that a birdlike creature would exist in the fossil record--somewhere between birds and dinosaurs--that had voluminous leg wings. In 2003, that animal was discovered: the four-winged dromaeosaur dinosaur Microraptor gui. God's Word or Human Reason?, by Jonathan Kane, Emily Willoughby & colleagues, stresses the importance of predictive power as a necessary feature of a scientific theory. Nothing illustrates the predictive power of evolution better than the visage of Microraptor and Tetrapteryx side by side, emblems of how Beebe's understanding of the natural world used the past to predict the future.