Some feathered dinosaurs may have briefly taken to the skies—only to give it up later. By studying rare fossils with preserved feathers, researchers uncovered a surprising clue hidden in molting ...

Scans of the most well-preserved fossil of a prehistoric flying reptile with intact feathers have revealed how the first birds managed to fly while their non-bird dinosaur cousins could not. The ...

For more than 150 years, researchers have been studying the fossils of bird-like dinosaur Archaeopteryx and attempting to answer this question: Did it fly? Although it may sound simple, the fossils of ...

Not all birds can fly. Penguins, ostriches, and kiwis are some famous examples. It’s pretty easy to figure out if a living bird can fly. But it’s a bit tricker when it comes to extinct birds or bird ...

Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the dinosaur ...

The bones of a 160-million-year-old dinosaur are helping scientists solve one of evolution’s biggest mysteries: how birds gained flight. Hidden within the wrist of a small, feathered dinosaur lies a ...

When we think of dinosaurs, we usually imagine scales, teeth, and a thunderous stomp. However, many dinosaurs, especially smaller theropods, actually had feathers. Weirdly enough, though, a lot of ...

May 21 (Reuters) - A new fossil of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Psittacosaurus, a dog-sized herbivore with a parrot-like beak, that was donated to a Chinese university came with a surprise - one ...

Feathers are among the most complex cutaneous appendages in the animal kingdom. While their evolutionary origin has been widely debated, paleontological discoveries and developmental biology studies ...