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The long debate over a complexly colored fossilized feather belonging to a species of bird that flew in the Earth's skies some 100 million years ago has been settled recently by scientists after they revealed that the coloring patterns were of biological origin, and might contain clues to some of the hues displa... |
9 July 2008
04:38 GMT |
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Today, only bats, birds and insects can fly. But birds detain the most records of animal flight, from speed to height. Some traits in bird anatomy represent their secret.1. Feathers evolved first for ensuring a body insulation and maintaining homeothermy (constant body temperature). Feathers can also make a "camoufla... |
17 March 2008
10:14 GMT |
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We know that some carnivorous (theropod) dinosaurs were feathered. Archaeopteryx, the oldest bird-dinosaur fossil discovered, was feathered, too. But the fossils preserved only imprints of feathers, as the feathers themselves degrade in time. However, this new discovery published in the journal "Proceedings of the R... |
12 March 2008
03:40 GMT |
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We've known that the bird's trills are produced by a very complex organ called syrinx, located on their trachea. But a new research published in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society B" journal shows that in fact their chirps may be produced via the most unexpected means. A hummingbird species has been foun... |
1 February 2008
03:59 GMT |
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Bird flight has fascinated humans since ever. And by over 150 years, with the discovery of the oldest bird, Archaeopteryx, a vivid debate divides scientists into two camps: those who say birds evolved from ground-dwelling ancestors and developed flight by taking off from the ground and those saying that birds evolved... |
8 November 2007
07:11 GMT |
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If you had walked the Earth 150 to 65 million years ago, the birds would have seemed very strange to you. First, they all displayed a mouth full of fearsome teeth. Too few flew, and many had well developed arms, with a lizard-like tail covered by feathers. In fact, all these strange birds were not birds at all, but d... |
3 October 2007
17:11 GMT |
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Birds are dinosaurs; or is it…some dinosaurs were in fact birds? It's quite difficult to answer this question, but what's certain is that many carnivorous dinosaurs were feathered. Some of the feathered dinosaurs were even as big as a rhino. However, few dino fossils discovered up to now were feathered. A n... |
21 September 2007
06:47 GMT |
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Birds are considered dwarf flying dinosaurs. Now, an 80-million-year-old recently found dwarf dinosaur in the southern Gobi desert (Mongolia) could be a missing link in the evolutionary question of how the tiny birds evolved from the huge beasts. The new feathered dinosaur, called Mahakala (after a Tibetan god) omnog... |
7 September 2007
02:49 GMT |
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If bonsai proved that the Japanese people can handle the art of "dwarfism", with Onagadori cocks they show how they can deal with gigantism, too. Onagadori ("Honourable Fowl" in Japanese) is a breed of domestic chicken and the cocks can have a tail reaching 10 m! This is an unchallengeable record amongst birds and pe... |
24 July 2007
14:46 GMT |
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An ostrich would look like an undernourished dwarf beside a huge beaked feathered dinosaur recently discovered in China's Gobi Desert. The ostrich-like dino weighed as much as a rhino (around 1.5 tons) and was over 16 ft (5 m) tall, being the biggest feathered animal ever and the largest toothless dinosaur known... |
14 June 2007
03:41 GMT |
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The common theory says that dinosaurs had feathers and birds originated from feathered dinosaurs. The oldest feathered dinosaur is considered the 140-million-year-old turkey-sized Sinosauropteryx. Scientists considered the distinctive patterns encountered on the skin of a Sinosauropteryx ("Chinese lizard wing") fossi... |
5 June 2007
02:59 GMT |
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There is a common concept amongst biologists about sexual selection and that many exaggerated male traits are the result of it. For example, sexual selection is regarded behind the peacock's tail or deer's antlers. But a team of Exeter and Cambridge universities has proven a common example of sexual select... |
6 April 2007
06:43 GMT |
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