Many small, feathered dinosaurs called maniraptorans went extinct along with the likes of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops at the end of the Cretaceous. But those who managed to survive became ancestors ...

A 115-million-year-old fossilized bird with a pair of long, ribbon-like tail feathers is the oldest bird ever found in Brazil. It was about the size of a hummingbird, and it likely boasted bright ...

For years, paleontologists have disagreed over whether birds from the Cretaceous period went out with a whimper — dying out gradually over the course of millions of years — or with a bang — getting ...

The Early Cretaceous is a critical interval in the early history of birds. Exceptional fossils indicate that important evolutionary novelties such as a pygostyle and a keeled sternum had already ...

Reconstruction of an avisaurid (e.g., A. darwini). Morphology of the tarsometatarsus suggests that these large birds engaged in raptorial behavior and could carry proportionally large prey.

Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science (1903-), Vol. 114, No. 1/2 (Spring 2011), pp. 115-123 (9 pages) Our analysis of vertebrate remains collected from a Cenomanian microsite in the Lincoln ...

It is now widely accepted that birds are descended from dinosaurs. It is also understood that this transition encompasses some of the most dramatic transformations morphologically, functionally, and ...

A 130-million-year-old bird holds a clue to ancient color that has never before been shown in a fossil. Eoconfuciusornis’ feathers contain not only microscopic pigment pods called melanosomes, but ...

Bones, eggs and eggshells are all that's left of a Transylvania Dinosaur-Era bird colony that made the mistake of nesting next to a big river, which wound up drowning the avian clan. The discovery, ...

Learn more about Vegavis iaai, an ancient ancestor of modern-day ducks, and one of the earliest modern birds ever discovered. Sam Walters is the associate editor at Discover Magazine who writes and ...

A near-perfect fossilized skull discovered in Antarctica reveals the bridge between prehistoric and modern birds, a new study has found. The fossil is a specimen of a species called Vegavis iaai, ...