Now, a new fossil discovered in 2011 and analyzed in a recent study published inNature appears to provide the missing link. The well-preserved skull reveals key bird-like features, including a ...

New research confirms that modern birds retain many ancient instincts inherited from their dinosaur ancestors. From complex social behaviors to survival tactics, birds act as living windows into ...

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 ...

Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 million years ago. But not all the birds alive at the time made it. Why the ancestors of modern birds ...

Modern birds are dinosaurs without toothy jaws, and with bigger brains. Newly published research fills in some of the missing links in their evolution.

Behold the Wonderchicken, the earliest modern bird ever found. Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, less than a million years before the asteroid impact that doomed all ...

Modern birds originated a hundred million years ago—long before the demise of dinosaurs, according to new research. In searching for the first ancestors of modern birds, studies have shown ...

In modern birds, such behavior helps them to conserve body heat; it likely served a similar purpose for maniraptoran dinosaurs that also curled up at bedtime, according to the study.

Modern birds have “structurally the most complex, and functionally the most efficient” respiratory system among vertebrates, according to the paper, ...

The rainbow of hues seen in modern bird eggs probably evolved in birds' dinosaur ancestors, which had eggs with colorful and speckled shells. That's according to a new study of fossil eggs in the ...

Modern birds evolved from ground-dwelling reptiles as their increasingly refined parenting skills led them into the trees, where they could better protect their young, proposes a researcher at the ...