#Richard Owen

A comparative plate on cream drafting vellum drawing a bat wing, a whale flipper, a horse leg and a human arm to one common scale, each skeleton's matching bones marked with the same numbered roundels, the human arm's humerus glowing bone ivory while the rest of the sheet stays monochrome ink and graphite

The Same Bones: What Homology Proves and Bad Design Confirms

One skeletal plan builds a bat's wing, a whale's flipper, a horse's leg and a human hand. Owen catalogued it in 1849; Darwin explained it with an ancestor. The evidence is sharpest where that inherited plan builds a worse machine than a fresh design would.

By Brecht Corbeel · August 29, 2026 · 20 min read

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