"Most previous studies suggest that insulation might have been the primary function for the first feathers, but our discovery supports that display represents one of the earliest functions for ...

Birds of a feather may flock together, but the feathers of birds differ altogether. New research from an international team led by USC scientists set out to learn how feathers developed and helped ...

Filoplumes may be tiny, but these hairlike feathers enable nonstop flights that span thousands of miles. Filoplumes may be tiny, but these hairlike feathers enable nonstop flights that span thousands ...

When we think of birds, the mind immediately turns to flight. That birds can fly and have adapted to a life of flying the world over is miraculous. Much of what allows the Aves taxonomic class to take ...

Progress in solving the particularly puzzling origin of feathers has also been hampered by what now appear to be false leads, such as the assumption that the primitive feather evolved by elongation ...

Over the last two decades, spectacular palaeontological discoveries, mainly from China, have revolutionized our understanding in the origin and evolution of feathers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Major novel ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers ...

It was the absence of feathers that got conservation biologist Thor Hanson thinking about the significance of them. Hanson was in Kenya studying the feeding habits of vultures, and he noticed the ...