Sentences with phrase «primitive birds»

The chick lived 127 million years ago and belonged to a group of primitive birds that shared the planet with the dinosaurs.

The fossil depicts the most primitive bird documented so far, though maybe not the oldest, as first suspected.

The Hesperornithiformes are a highly derived but very understudied group of primitive birds from the Cretaceous period.

Eoconfuciusornis, crow - sized primitive birds that lived in what is now China around 130 million years ago, are the earliest birds to have a keratinous beak and no teeth, like modern birds.

Pterosaurs and primitive birds glided above, and rivers teemed with turtles, fish, and fish - eating plesiosaurs.

Researchers continue to debate whether primitive birds used their wings primarily to glide from branch to branch or to the ground, or if they actually flapped them to take off.

Based on such primitive birds as Archaeopteryx, most have come to accept that birds evolved from small, terrestrial dinosaurs known as theropods.

Whatever the case, R. ostromi is clearly one of the most primitive birds ever discovered.

«Our analyses indicate it as the most primitive bird known,» said co-author Andrea Cau, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Museo Geologico Giovanni Capellini in Italy.

A new Review in The Auk: Ornithological Advances examines answers from three sources — modern birds, fossils of primitive birds, and fossils of the dinosaurs from which birds are descended — to shed new light on the subject.

Shuvuuia is the most primitive bird to show the trait.

Fossils of primitive birds and eggs from the Mesozoic era place them midway between their dinosaur ancestors and their modern descendants, with eggs between those of pre-avian dinosaurs and modern birds in term of size and shape.

A new study of some primitive birds from the Cretaceous shows how several separate lineages evolved adaptations for diving.

Primitive birds, like Archaeopteryx, had tails, but modern birds don't.

The primitive birds, without flight adaptations such as the muscle pulley system, wouldn't have been capable of the full range of flapping motion birds today use.

Based on these observations, the primitive bird was thought to merely glide from branch to branch, rather than flapping its wings to fly.

A comparison of its features with those of other fossils indicates that it is closely related to rahonavis — a primitive bird that lived in Madagascar about...

«It is very surprising that despite being skeletally quite different from their modern counterparts, these primitive birds show striking similarities in their soft anatomy,» said Guillermo Navalón, a doctorate candidate at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and lead author of the report.

Paleontologists initially thought the bones were from Mononykus olecranus, a primitive bird.

With a continuous surface, he says it could generate more lift than the feathers along the tail of the most primitive bird, Archaeopteryx, making it more useful for flight.

All the known fossils of primitive birds (stem avians) could easily fit on a desk and our only look at Mesozoic [250 to 65 million years ago (Ma)-RSB- feathers (except for a few isolated plumes) was Archaeopteryx, a theropod dinosaur considered by most to be the most primitive bird (see the figure).

Their feathers probably would have buckled or snapped during strong flapping or sharp maneuvers, so the primitive birds may have been limited to gliding, says Robert Nudds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manchester in England.

So the discovery of two well - preserved skeletons of a new species of primitive bird should provide valuable insight into how birds evolved.

«The new fossils superbly document the link between modern whales and their land - based forebears,» he concludes, «and should take their place among other famous «intermediates,» such as the most primitive bird, Archaeopteryx, and the early hominid Australopithecus.

Since 2003, scientists have puzzled over the identity of a batch of tiny fossilised eggs, originally concluding that they belonged to a small theropod dinosaur or a primitive bird.

According to the study, published in the journal Science on Thursday, the growth rate of feathered dinosaurs and primitive birds was slower than that of modern birds.

There is an abundant presence of birds, such as striped and white herons, tuqui tuquis, the black headed noisy bird (Donacobius), the hoatzin or shansho (Ophisthocomus hoatzin), a weird bird, as its physical aspect and customs make it look like a primitive bird.