Early Birds News

November 22, 2024

Top Headlines

Thanksgiving Special: Dinosaur Drumsticks and the Story of the Turkey Trot

Nov. 20, 2024 — Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago ...

Bird Brain from the Age of Dinosaurs Reveals Roots of Avian Intelligence

Nov. 13, 2024 — 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 ...

Did the World's Best-Preserved Dinosaurs Really Die in 'Pompeii-Type' Events?

Nov. 4, 2024 — Extraordinarily well preserved fossils of feathered dinosaurs and other creatures got that way after being frozen in time by by volcanic eruptions, researchers have long suggested. Not so fast, says ...

Fossil of Huge Terror Bird Offers New Information About Wildlife in South America 12 Million Years Ago

Nov. 4, 2024 — Evolutionary biologists report they have analyzed a fossil of an extinct giant meat-eating bird -- which they say could be the largest known member of its kind -- providing new information about ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:27pm EST

Evolutionary Paths Vastly Differ for Birds, Bats

Nov. 1, 2024 — 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 ...

Newly Discovered Late Cretaceous Birds May Have Carried Heavy Prey Like Extant Raptors

Oct. 9, 2024 — Newly discovered birds from Late Cretaceous North America were hawk-sized and had powerful raptor-like feet, according to a new ...

Pterosaurs Needed Feet on the Ground to Become Giants

Oct. 4, 2024 — A study determines when and how pterosaurs went from tiny tree-climbers to towering terrestrial titans Flying reptiles first came down from the trees in the mid-Jurassic Period, paving the way for ...

'Some Pterosaurs Would Flap, Others Would Soar' -- New Study Further Confirms the Flight Capability of These Giants of the Skies

Sep. 6, 2024 — Some species of pterosaurs flew by flapping their wings while others soared like vultures, demonstrates a new study. Findings include a new pterosaur ...

Rethinking the Dodo

Aug. 16, 2024 — Researchers are setting out to challenge our misconceptions about the Dodo, one of the most well-known but poorly understood species of bird. Researchers have undertaken the most comprehensive review ...

Giant Prehistoric Flying Reptile Took Off Using Similar Method to Bats, Study Finds

Aug. 7, 2024 — The pterosaur likely used all four limbs to propel itself in the air, as seen in bats today, researchers have ...

The Ancestor of All Modern Birds Probably Had Iridescent Feathers

July 26, 2024 — Birds tend to be more colorful in the tropics, and scientists wanted to find out how they got there: if colorful feathers evolved in the tropics, or if tropical birds have brightly-colored ancestors ...

Fossil Shows How Penguins' Wings Evolved

Aug. 2, 2024 — A tiny fossil penguin plays a huge role in the evolutionary history of the bird, an international study ...

Tiny New Zealand Bird Delivers a Lesson in Birdsong Evolution

June 14, 2024 — Scientists are rethinking the evolution of vocal learning in birds. New Zealand's smallest bird, the rifleman or titipounamu, may have a rudimentary version of the talent possessed by parrots, ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be ...

First 'Warm-Blooded' Dinosaurs May Have Emerged 180 Million Years Ago

May 15, 2024 — The ability to regulate body temperature, a trait all mammals and birds have today, may have evolved among some dinosaurs early in the Jurassic period about 180 million years ago. The new study ...

Feathers, Cognition and Global Consumerism in Colonial Amazonia

May 1, 2024 — Amazonia is the home of the largest variety of birds in the world. In such a unique environment, craft cultures have flourished by translating the beauty and creativity of environmental materials ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. 3, 2024 — Genomic anamolies dating back to the time of the dinosaurs misled scientists about the evolutionary history of ...

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 toothless beak. It's from 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. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...

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 question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve ...

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, which belonged to an early species of Paleozoic ...

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 years ago -- and now researchers are bringing ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 theory that species evolve over ...

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 ...