The feet of a bird tell us a lot about its life. Newly described, the fossil feet of the ancestors of modern birds reveal how superbly adapted they were to their world.
It’s still not known exactly how female birds produce such colourful and intricately-patterned eggs. But we do have some theories about the survival advantage this provides.
Archaehierax sylvestris, whose remains have been unearthed in the arid South Australian outback, was the apex predator in a lush prehistoric forest filled with marsupials and waterfowl.
Some species can do well in the face of extreme hardship.
George Burba/Shutterstock
From choosing a compatible personality to sharing childcare equally, many Australian birds have mastered the art of successful relationships.
A 9-metre-long early relative of T rex that stalked the Early Cretaceous of northern China was the first truly terrifying feathered dinosaur discovered.
Brian Choo
While a week can be a long time in politics, palaeontology typically moves more sedately, in keeping with its subject matter (the slow progression of the aeons). But one area of fossil research is seeing…
Little bronze-cuckoo: my eggs are the best.
Greg Schechter
Cuckoos aren’t the kind of parents you’d want. They never raise their young ones, leaving that job to other birds. They achieve this by laying their eggs in other expectant birds’ nests, who treat them…
A flock of early birds (Longirostravis) preen one of their large dinosaurian relatives (Yutyrannus).
Brian Choo
Spectacular transitional fossils, many from northern China, provide overwhelming evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds and thus didn’t all perish when the deadly meteorite struck at the end of the…
What is it that makes rockstars so attractive to the opposite sex? Turns out Charles Darwin had it pegged hundreds of years ago – and it has a lot to do with peacocks. In The Descent of Man, and Selection…
Tinamous are the closest living relatives of the flightless ratites.
Brian Gratwicke/Flickr
Ratites – a group of flightless birds including the emu, ostrich and extinct moa – were long believed to have evolved from a single flightless ancestor, but research published today in Molecular Biology…