A dinosaur-like fossil discovered in China is providing paleontologists with clues about the evolution of birds. The unusual bird named Fujianvenator prodigiosus was found in China's Fujian province ...

Few subjects in evolutionary theory have posed such intriguing puzzles for so long as the origin of birds. Evidence of avian beginnings has been elusive in the fossil record because birds' light, ...

A UCLA campus shutdown during COVID revealed rapid evolution in urban birds, as junco beaks shifted with the rise and fall of ...

A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution. A ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

The woodpecker is a unique bird species that has gone through some mysteriously acquired adaptations since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Fossils tell us, without any explanations of course (because ...

Researchers at Rice University have uncovered new insights into the evolution of bird behavior, revealing why certain mating systems persist while others disappear over time. In a recent paper ...

New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as birds. New Cornell ...

Scientists have known for some time that birds like chickens and ostriches are the closest living relatives of the Tyrannosaurus rex. Now, a newly discovered fossil of a bird-like dinosaur could ...