Sentences with phrase «of modern birds»

The detailed family tree of modern birds has however confused biologists for centuries and the molecular details of how birds arrived at the spectacular biodiversity of more than 10,000 species is barely known.

His teams have also uncovered critical fossils indicating that the Antarctica maybe the center for the origin of modern bird groups and many examples of marine reptiles including a unique skeleton of a baby plesiosaur (2005).

* Correction, 5 May, 3:57 p.m.: An earlier version of this story stated that mosasaurs were living 130 million years ago at the time of the earliest relatives of modern birds.

Each exquisitely preserved specimen has the telltale traits of a modern bird: fan - shaped tail feathers, highly fused bones at the ends of the wings, and the U-shaped wishbone familiar to anyone who has carved a roast chicken.

The resemblance of the fan to the tails of modern birds suggests «it would be a reasonably good pitch and roll generator» in flight, says Michael Habib of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.

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.

The international group of researchers analyzed the genomes of 48 avian species that represent the evolutionary history of modern birds and compared them to many other vertebrates to find DNA sequences specific to avians.

The find makes Jeholornis unique, as it combines an ancestral long tail with a fan of feathers at its base that resembles the tail feathers of modern birds, says Zhonghe Zhou of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology in Beijing.

Meanwhile, the lineage of modern birds evolved «huge chest muscles and wings comprised of many different types of feathers layered over each other» — features essential to high - powered flight, Brusatte explains.

And recently there has been another great fossil found by Chinese palaeontologists, namely another type of feathered dinosaur, obvious precursors of modern birds.

The study also gives paleontologists new reason to scrutinize early Paleocene rocks, not to mention existing museum collections, for signs of other representatives of modern bird groups, Witmer says.

«The paper fortifies the evidence for an early, explosive radiation of modern birds.»

That discovery, combined with other fossil finds in North America that are related to chickens, turkeys, flamingos, and loons, among others, suggests that most major groups of modern birds originated and began to diversify before the K - T boundary.

The whole arrangement (illustrated below) looks amazingly like the tucked - in nighttime repose of modern birds.

The ancestors of modern birds seemed to have sophisticated hearing — and perhaps other sharp faculties, as well.

Earlier this year Habib suggested that the largest pterosaurs took flight by using all four limbs to leap into the air — a technique similar to that used by some bats but quite unlike the take - off behaviour of modern birds.

Hosts infected by viruses found new uses for the genetic material the agents of disease left behind; metabolic enzymes somehow came to refract light rays through the eye's lens; mammals took advantage of the sutures between the skull bones to help their young pass through the birth canal; and, in the signature example, feathers appeared in fossils before the ancestors of modern birds took to the skies.

The new family tree, compiled using information from fossils and from genetic analyses of modern birds, reveals that this lineage underwent a major burst of evolution after an asteroid slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago and killed off the rest of their dinosaurian kin.

The team's genetic information came from analyses of two particular genes from 230 species representing all major subgroups of modern birds.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the lab run by Alexander Vargas at the University of Chile has re-examined fossils stored at several museum collections, while at the same time collecting new developmental data from seven different species of modern birds.

Contrary to their portrayal in popular films, dinosaurs are now widely accepted by scientists as having been covered in feathers, possibly in a range of colors, much like the colorful plumage of modern birds, which are a living dinosaur lineage.

The front portion of the creature's lower jaw had a deep, thin, crescent - shaped keel (artist's representation above) that may have been covered with keratin, akin to the beaks of modern birds.

No one is sure just what conditions prevailed in the postasteroid apocalypse, but Wang speculates that the fast growth rates of modern birds, which let them reach adulthood faster and spend less time dependent on their parents, may have given them an advantage; likewise skilled flight may have been a boon.

Then there are the almost countless fish, some with the tail of a smaller fish grotesquely hanging out of their mouths.These fossils offer more than beauty: they preserve in wonderful detail early forms of modern birds and mammals, including the first bats in the fossil record, making them vital windows into evolution.

Vegavis is important in being a close relative of today's ducks and geese, and therefore the only definitive member of any modern bird group that has yet been identified from the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Dinosaurs).

At 7:30 PM EST, artist Jane Kim will unveil The Marriage of Art and Science: A One - of - a-Kind Mural of Birds, the «only mural in the world depicting all 243 families of modern birds (and 28 dinosaurs and pre-pre-pre-historic beasts) in one place» at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Since then, more four - winged dinosaurs have been found, but doubt remained about whether they were direct ancestors of modern birds, or just an unusual group of dinobirds that later died out.

«This is borne out by the fact that Hesperonis — discovered by Othniel Charles Marsh of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History — which is a near relative of modern birds that still retains teeth and the most primitive stem avian with a modernized beak in the form of fused, elongate premaxillae, also possesses a modern bird palatine bone,» he said.

But more distant groups have proportionately fewer traits of modern birds.

I am particularly interested in figuring out how quickly oviraptorosaurs grew from babies to adults, and what the ecology and anatomy of modern birds can tell us.

«The advent of the wulst seems to go hand in hand with the evolution of modern birds.

To date, it has been controversial among experts whether the bristles of Psittacosaurus are comparable to the feathers of modern birds.

It's unlikely that the feather belongs to any lineages of modern birds, since those don't show up for another 25 million years or so.

Like the tails of modern birds, these form an aerofoil without gaps.

«Larry Martin, a paleontologist from the University of Kansas, said clearly in 1985 that the archaeopteryx is not an ancestor of any modern birds; instead, it's a member of a totally extinct group of birds.»»

Truthfollower: «Larry Martin, a paleontologist from the University of Kansas, said clearly in 1985 that the archaeopteryx is not an ancestor of any modern birds; instead, it's a member of a totally extinct group of birds.»»

Those dinosaurs close to the ancestry of birds shared some of these traits, but they had two functional reproductive tracts, and their eggs were smaller relative to their body size and more elongated than those of modern birds.

This shifted their centre of gravity forward, pushing their bodies into a tilted posture like that of modern birds and ensuring that their wings were near the centre of gravity.

Flightless Beibeilong sinensis, which lived around 90 million years ago, had feathers, primitive wings and a beak, but dwarfed any of its modern bird relatives.

Scientists typically assume that a fossilized dinosaur consists of rock that would entirely dissolve in acid, but Schweitzer wanted to get a closer look at the fossil's fine structure and compare it with that of modern birds.

The medullary bone even contained gaps and mazelike fiber patterns resembling those of modern birds.

In the past few years, a number of paleontologists have reported skeletonal evidence that saurians were warm blooded, nurturing, and the probable ancestors of modern birds.

Virtual models of the avian brains looked surprisingly similar in size and shape to those of modern birds.