Birds can inhabit various environments with different climates and temperatures, ranging from cold polar regions to scorching hot deserts. To survive and thrive in these very different environments, ...

Smithsonian researcher Klara Widrig studies living birds to build 3D models of their ancestors’ anatomies, uncovering how flight evolved Ashley D'Souza Postdoctoral researcher Klara Widrig (standing) ...

A pigeon pecking at crumbs in a city square rarely attracts much attention. It is easy to see it as an ordinary bird, part of the background of daily life. Yet its ancestry reaches back into a world ...

Everyone knows what a bird is – and pretty much everyone knows what a dinosaur is. But not everyone is aware that birds evolved from dinosaurs approximately 160 million years ago. In fact, birds and ...

Bird physiology is conducive to flight: small size, hollow bones, and generally symmetrical feathers on the wings and tail. It seems like a no-brainer that bird evolution was optimized for flight, but ...

If feathers did not evolve first for flight, what other advantage could they have provided the creatures that had them? Some ...

Newswise — Even the giant wings of the albatross are not ‘optimally’ shaped for their extraordinary long-distance migrations, according to new University of Bristol research. The study, published in ...

Even the giant wings of the albatross are not "optimally" shaped for their extraordinary long-distance migrations, according to new University of Bristol research. The study, published in Nature ...