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 ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. After the infamous asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs, ...

Drawing of an ivory-billed woodpecker by Michael DiGiorgio. Community members are invited to learn about avian artworks at A Brief History of Bird Illustration and Painting, 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 25 in ...

Kevin Padian is in the Department of Integrative Biology and at the Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. Why was the question of the origin of bird flight ...

New Delhi: A team of researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered two bird fossils in Jurassic rocks from the ...

Certain macroevolutionary studies suggest that their earliest diversification dates back to the Jurassic period (approximately 145 million years ago). However, the earliest evolutionary history of ...