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 '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 ...

Shapes of beaks and snouts come in an extraordinary range of forms, reflecting adaptations to different lifestyles and environments. Yet beneath this diversity lies a paradox: across birds and mammals ...

What’s in a song? Quite a lot, according to Professor of Biology Heather Williams ’77 of Williams College in Massachusetts. She’s the lead author of a recent high-profile study on the cultural ...

Birds are the only dinosaur lineage that survived until today. About 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary, a mass extinction event destroyed all non-avian dinosaurs, ...

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 ...

The bird retina is one of the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom, yet it doesn’t use the energy ...

Bats are incredibly diverse animals: They can climb onto other animals to drink their blood, pluck insects from leaves or hover to drink nectar from tropical flowers, all of which require distinctive ...