Early Birds News

April 23, 2024

Top Headlines

Mountain Chickadees Have Remarkable Memories. A New Study Explains Why

Apr. 17, 2024 — Mountain chickadees have among the best spatial memory in the animal kingdom. New research identifies the genes at play and offers insight into how a shifting climate may impact the evolution of this unique ...

Birdfeeders Are Designed to Keep Unwanted Guests Away

Apr. 9, 2024 — The first birdfeeders were made in the 19th century, and their design rapidly evolved during the 20th century. Researchers at the consider the evolution of the birdfeeder to be an example of multispecies design, where unwanted guests have shaped the ...

Dinosaur Study Challenges Bergmann's Rule

Apr. 5, 2024 — A new study calls into question Bergmann's rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer ...

We've Had Bird Evolution All Wrong

Apr. 1, 2024 — Genomic anamolies dating back to the time of the dinosaurs misled scientists about the evolutionary history of ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:55pm EDT

Alaska Dinosaur Tracks Reveal a Lush, Wet Environment

Mar. 12, 2024 — A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began ...

Fossil Named 'Attenborough's Strange Bird' Was the First in Its Kind Without Teeth

Mar. 5, 2024 — A new fossil, named 'Attenborough's strange bird' after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, is the first of its kind to evolve a ...

The Hidden Rule for Flight Feathers -- And How It Could Reveal Which Dinosaurs Could Fly

Feb. 12, 2024 — Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. ...

Scientists Pinpoint Growth of Brain's Cerebellum as Key to Evolution of Bird Flight

Jan. 30, 2024 — Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring ...

Oldest Known Fossilized Skin Is 21 Million Years Older Than Previous Examples

Jan. 11, 2024 — Researchers have identified a 3D fragment of fossilized skin that is at least 21 million years than previously described skin fossils. The skin, ...

Unknown Animals Were Leaving Bird-Like Footprints in Late Triassic Southern Africa

Nov. 29, 2023 — Ancient animals were walking around on bird-like feet over 210 million years ago, according to a new ...

Like the Phoenix, Australia's Giant Birds of Prey Rise Again from Limestone Caves

Nov. 17, 2023 — Australia's only vulture, and a fearsome extinct eagle, are among the earliest recorded birds of prey from the Pleistocene period more than 50,000 ...

Birds Set Foot Near South Pole in Early Cretaceous, Australian Tracks Show

Nov. 16, 2023 — The discovery of 27 avian footprints on the southern Australia coast -- dating back to the Early Cretaceous when Australia was still connected to Antarctica -- opens another window onto early avian ...

Researchers' Analysis of Perching Birds Points to New Answers in Evolutionary Diversification

Sep. 21, 2023 — When Charles Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands almost 200 years ago as a gentleman naturalist, he used the power of observation to develop his ...

Genome Study Reveals 30 Years of Darwin's Finch Evolution

Sep. 29, 2023 — An international team of researchers has released a landmark study on contemporary evolutionary change in natural populations. Their study uses one of the largest genomic datasets ever produced for ...

Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins

Sep. 21, 2023 — Palaeontologists have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather ...

Flying Reptiles Had Nurturing Parental Style

July 19, 2023 — Did the pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the days of the dinosaurs, practice parental care or not? New research shows that pterosaurs were indeed caring parents -- but only the larger ...

Fossils Reveal How Ancient Birds Molted Their Feathers -- Which Could Help Explain Why Ancestors of Modern Birds Survived When All the Other Dinosaurs Died

July 5, 2023 — 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 lived ...

Extinct Warbler's Genome Sequenced from Museum Specimens

June 23, 2023 — The Bachman's warbler, a songbird that was last seen in North America nearly 40 years ago, was a distinct species and not a hybrid of its two living sister species, according a new study in ...

Dinosaurs Were the First to Take the Perspectives of Others

May 22, 2023 — Understanding that others hold different viewpoints from your own is essential for human sociality. Adopting another person's visual perspective is a complex skill that emerges around the age of ...

Fossils Reveal the Long-Term Relationship Between Feathered Dinosaurs and Feather-Feeding Beetles

Apr. 17, 2023 — New fossils in amber have revealed that beetles fed on the feathers of dinosaurs about 105 million years ago, showing a symbiotic relationship of one-sided or mutual ...

Analysis of Dinosaur Eggshells: Bird-Like Troodon Laid 4 to 6 Eggs in a Communal Nest

Apr. 3, 2023 — An international research team has determined that Troodon, a dinosaur very close to modern birds, was a warm-blooded animal (an endotherm), but had a reproductive system similar to that of modern ...

Scientists Develop New Index Based on Functional Morphology to Understand How Ancestors of Modern Birds Used Their Wings

Feb. 8, 2023 — Scientists have compared the relationship among the strength of flight bones, body mass, and the way modern birds fly to better understand the evolution of flight in birds and extinct animals, such ...

Researchers Uncover 92 Fossil Nests Belonging to Some of India's Largest Dinosaurs

Jan. 18, 2023 — The discovery of more than 250 fossilized eggs reveals intimate details about the lives of titanosaurs in the Indian subcontinent, according to a new ...

Fossils Reveal Dinosaurs of Prehistoric Patagonia

Jan. 12, 2023 — A study is providing a glimpse into dinosaur and bird diversity in Patagonia during the Late Cretaceous, just before the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. The fossils represent the first record of ...

The Other Paleo Diet: Rare Discovery of Dinosaur Remains Preserved With Its Last Meal

Dec. 21, 2022 — Microraptor was an opportunistic predator, feeding on fish, birds, lizards -- and now small mammals. The discovery of a rare fossil reveals the creature was a generalist carnivore in the ancient ...

Dinosaurs Were on the Up Before Asteroid Downfall

Dec. 7, 2022 — Dinosaurs dominated the world right up until a deadly asteroid hit the earth, leading to their mass extinction, some 66 million years ago, a landmark study reveals. Fresh insights into ...

Fossil Overturns More Than a Century of Knowledge About the Origin of Modern Birds

Nov. 30, 2022 — Fossilized fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern ...

Planet's Rarest Birds at Higher Risk of Extinction

Nov. 25, 2022 — A new study finds that bird species with extreme or uncommon combinations of traits face the highest risk of ...

More Than One Way to Build a Black Bird

Nov. 1, 2022 — For a species of flycatcher in the remote Solomon Islands, scientists have so far found at least two genetic pathways leading to the same physical outcome: all-black feathers. This change was no ...

Fossil Bird's Skull Reconstruction Reveals a Brain Made for Smelling and Eyes Made for Daylight

Oct. 24, 2022 — Piecing together the crushed skull of a fossil bird that lived alongside the dinosaurs helped researchers extrapolate what its brain would have looked like: big olfactory bulbs would have meant that ...

These Female Hummingbirds Evolved to Look Like Males -- Apparently to Evade Aggression

Sep. 7, 2022 — 1 in 5 adult female white-necked jacobin hummingbirds look like males. New research shows that this is a rare case of 'deceptive mimicry' within a species: Females with male-like plumage ...

Australian Vulture Emerges from Fossil Record

July 19, 2022 — Australia's first fossil vulture has been confirmed more than 100 years after it was first described as an eagle. The discovery highlights the diversity of Australian megafauna and other animals ...

The Secret Lives of Darwin's Finches Reveal Daily Commutes the Equivalent of 30 Soccer Fields

June 8, 2022 — Using radio transmitters, scientists have gained new insights into the behavior of medium ground finches in the Galapagos Islands. A study reveals daily movement patterns covering an area equivalent ...

Study Suggests That Most of Our Evolutionary Trees Could Be Wrong

June 1, 2022 — New research suggests that determining evolutionary trees of organisms by comparing anatomy rather than gene sequences is misleading. The study shows that we often need to overturn centuries of ...