A near complete skull fossil found in Antarctica has revealed the oldest known modern bird — a mallard duck-size creature related to the waterfowl that live by lakes and oceans today, a new study has ...

Researchers have discovered "wonderchicken," a 67-million-year-old fossilized bird they believe is the first "modern bird." Known as Asterioornis, the bird was discovered in a limestone quarry near ...

Modern birds capable of flight all have a specialized wing structure called the propatagium without which they could not fly. The evolutionary origin of this structure has remained a mystery, but new ...

A newly unearthed 69-million-year-old fossil is shaking up long-standing debates among paleontologists about when modern birds emerged. The discovery of a nearly complete skull from the extinct bird ...

Tens of millions of years ago, a diverse array of bird species soared, swam, and thrived amid their scaly reptile cousins—and ...

This is an Inside Science story. Just a few million years before an asteroid killed nearly all dinosaurs on Earth, a creature resembling a small albatross with teeth flew through the Cretaceous skies.

The color palette of the birds you see out your window depend on where you live. If you’re far from the Equator, most birds tend to have drab colors, but the closer you are to the tropics, you’ll ...

Anyone who has watched a rooster stalking around a farmyard might agree that there is something very dinosaur-like about birds. That may come as no surprise, given that birds are dinosaurs. But in ...

The tiny fossil dates to more than 66 million years ago. "This is one of the best-preserved fossil bird skulls of any age." The fossil provides the best evidence yet of when and how the earliest ...

The path to flight in modern birds was full of forks, twists and dead ends. Erin Malsbury Tens of millions of years of bird evolution guided some of the most important elements of human-powered flight ...

A tiny fossil skull nicknamed “Wonderchicken” is giving scientists a rare glimpse at early ancestors of today’s birds. It may be the oldest known fossil from this group. With a face like those of ...

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