Sentences with phrase «ancient birds»

But the evolutionary origins of this long - distance migration have remained opaque due to the complex geographic distributions of modern and ancient bird ranges.

Eomys quercyi, an extinct rodent that lived about 26 million years ago, has been known only from teeth and jaw fragments found in the fossil droppings of ancient birds of prey.

Archaeopteryx has always been considered to be the most primitive as well as the most ancient bird.

Previous studies argued that the feathers of these and other ancient birds and dinosaurs preserved small, round structures interpreted to be melanosomes — pigment - containing organelles that, along with other pigments, give feathers their color.

Researchers examined the evolutionary links between ancient birds and their closest dinosaur relatives, by analyzing the anatomical make - up of more than 850 body features in 150 extinct species, and used statistical techniques to analyze their findings and assemble a detailed family tree.

Habib's presentation, along with others exploring what ancient birds could and could not do, has sparked intense interest in variations between the anatomies of modern birds that display different behaviors.

This sophisticated brain structure, Milner speculates, may have allowed ancient birds to adapt to the environmental changes that had killed off their dinosaur kin 10 million years earlier.

Some researchers have argued that small pterosaurs were ecologically replaced by birds by the Late Cretaceous, but the discovery of new, small - bodied pterosaur remains from British Columbia shows that at least some smaller flying reptiles lived alongside ancient birds..

The specimens document the full evolutionary spectrum of feathers, from simple strands — previously inferred only from fuzzy halos seen in rocks — to complex structures adapted for flight and diving, which Wolfe's team believes came from ancient birds.

He and museum colleague Santiago Claramunt, also an ornithologist, didn't include well - known ancient birds such as Archaeopteryx and Confuciusornis, which belonged to lineages that eventually died out.

Being able to isolate eggshell DNA will give detailed information about how ancient bird and reptilian species lived and died.

Not only does the bird look nearly modern, but it was apparently a water dweller, showing that «ancient birds became specialized in their respective habits» very early, says paleontologist Luis Chiappe of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California.

The studies suggest that Fgf8 and WNT signaling changes allowed skulls of ancient birds «to evolve in a whole new direction» and form a beak, Abzhanov says.

Previous studies of juvenile Enantiornithes have shown that the sternums of these birds ossified in a pattern different from modern and other ancient birds.

A team of researchers, led by the University of Edinburgh (UK) and including Swarthmore College Associate Professor of Statistics Steve C. Wang, examined the evolutionary links between ancient birds and their closest dinosaur relatives.

Of the many media outlets that covered her paper detailing her discovery of the oldest known vocal organ specimen found in an ancient bird fossil, several took liberties in their interpretations of its results.

The shape of the ancient bird's wing bones suggests it was capable of short bursts of active, flapping flight, similar to how modern birds like pheasants and quails fly to escape predators, a new study finds.

The colour change may have given the ancient birds a turbo boost, Clarke speculates.

A new paper documents the intricate arrangement of the muscles and ligaments that controlled the main feathers of the wing of an ancient bird, supporting the notion that at least some of the most ancient birds performed aerodynamic feats in a fashion similar to those of many living birds.

A new discovery published in the journal Scientific Reports documents the intricate arrangement of the muscles and ligaments that controlled the main feathers of the wing of an ancient bird, supporting the notion that at least some of the most ancient birds performed aerodynamic feats in a fashion similar to those of many living birds.

Ancient birds may have flown over the heads of dinosaurs but some aspects of the precise flight modes of these early fliers still remain unclear.

Beyond the bones preserved in the fossil, the tiny wing of this ancient bird reveals details of a complex network of muscles that in modern birds controls the fine adjustments of the wing's main feathers, allowing birds to master the sky.

The ancient bird Archaeopteryx reveals an intermediate step.

Two reports in this issue, by McKellar et al. (1) on page 1619 and Wogelius et al. (2) on page 1622, provide a glimpse of the color patterning in the feathers of ancient birds.

Online reader David Spector wondered if researchers could 3 - D print the syrinx to replicate the ancient bird's squawks.

Then he'll make CT scans of fossil skulls of ancient birds and dinosaurs to see when turbinal ridges, and presumably endothermy, first appeared.

That's about the same size as modern - day hummingbirds and sunbirds, but the ancient bird isn't related to them or to any of today's hundreds of species of birds that get their nutrition from flowers.

But it doesn't follow that ancient bird eggs could withstand this, say Charles Deeming at the University of Lincoln, UK, and Gerald Mayr at the Senckenberg Research Institute...

Not only have we discovered that the Passenger Pigeon was a well adapted, resilient, and ancient bird, we have identified some of the first genes that may help revive the species.

The wings revealed that the ancient birds were almost fully developed when they were hatched.