A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering, one comprising nine orders of magnitude, from the nanoscale to the meter ...

Advances in scientific technology are upending what we know about pterosaurs, the reptilian close cousins to dinosaurs who were the first of Earth’s vertebrates to achieve flapping-powered flight.

Over the last two decades, spectacular palaeontological discoveries, mainly from China, have revolutionized our understanding in the origin and evolution of feathers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Major novel ...

In a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international team led by Professor Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University and including Dr Michael Pittman of the Department of Earth ...

Feather microstructures can remarkably change the appearance of red plumage without any corresponding changes in either pigment concentration or molecule types Adult male Brazilian tanager ...

Newfound fossils of a feathered dinosaur suggest that the extinct reptiles might have possessed a diversity in plumage types that puts modern birds to shame. (See bird pictures.) Farmers in ...

Dec. 17 (UPI) --New research proves pterosaurs had feathers too, the same kinds as dinosaurs and birds. The discovery pushes back the origin of feathers by at least 70 million years. For millions of ...