But it can, and always could, even without us finding the Banal sequences from Laos bats there was no scientific reason to think a spike like this was impossible to come about by evolution.

You know what would be impossible to explain by evolution? If a freaking protein tag like GFP, MBP, SUMO or similar would sit at some of the viral proteins, or purification tags like HA or FLAG.

But a spike that is similar to hundreds of other spikes out of a sequence diverse family of spikes? Common.