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Feathered / Flying Dinosaurs & The Evolution Of Birds

SoundDust

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from 'ere

Feb. 6, 2004 -- A new exhibit of dinosaurs sporting feathers is stirring controversy in the scientific community. The exhibit's organizer says the fossils prove that birds, as a species, are much older than researchers previously believe.

Eric Niiler of member station KPBS toured the exhibit at San Diego's Natural History Museum, which features 120-million-year-old fossils discovered in northeastern China. The exhibit includes 10-foot-tall models of what some paleontologists believe a feathered raptor might have looked like.

Not everyone in the scientific community believes in the dinosaur-bird connection. But the curator of the exhibit, dinosaur sculptor and self-styled paleontologist Stephen Czerkas is adding a new wrinkle to the debate: He claims what many scientists believe are feathered dinosaurs are really primitive birds.

and 'ere

After decades of acrimony and debate it’s official: Birds are dinosaurs.

So concludes Jacques Gauthier, curator of paleontology at Yale’s Peabody Museum, and expert in dinosaur evolution.

The Peabody’s new exhibit, "Hatching the Past: Dinosaur Eggs, Nests and Young," could not be clearer.

Not only does a branch of therapod dinosaurs bear striking anatomical similarity to birds, these dinosaurs apparently acted much like birds, Gauthier said.

Dinosaurs laid eggs in patterns reminiscent of birds, the "thunder lizards" incubated their eggs, and cared for their dinosaur hatchlings.

Gauthier said that now virtually all paleontologists accept that birds are a kind of dinosaur. "Things have changed," Gauthier said.
 
i read a book once, cant remember the title or the author (some itallian guy, name began with an F) on the evolution of birds. He was millitantly against the idea and had many very relevant points to make.

But I think that was before these latest discoveries in China were properly examined, I have the excellent little NHM book, `Dino-birds` by Angela Milner and the fossils clearly display feather imprints.

And these dinosaurs can be kept as pets (I have also a useful book on the very subject of dinosaurs as pets, the author sadly concludes that a great many spiece are unsuitable, he does reccomend Achaeopteryx though.)
 
I think you may mean Alan Feduccia, who wrote "The Origin and Evolution of Birds". As you say, he is violently against the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but seems to devote his time in picking flaws in the dinosaur -> bird theory, rather than proposing any viable alternative. One taxon he did propose as a bird ancestor, Megalancosaurus, on the basis of a vaguely birdlike head, is actually a rather bizarre-looking chameleon-shaped creature, and not an aerodynamic glider as he claimed.
There are some interesting articles (from a pro-dinosaur point of view) here: http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/jdp.htm
 
Yup thats the one. A great book in spite of its flaws, the Bird specialist at the NHM reccomended it to me.

Its a shame there is not more written on prehistoric birds, they are a fastinating area of study.
 
There are a few, "Dinosaurs of the Air, by Greory S. Paul" is very good, though heavy going (at least it was for me). There's also "Mesozoic Birds, eds. L.M. Chiappe & L.M. Witmer", which I haven't read yet. And due out, there's "Feathered Dragons: Studies on the Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds, eds. P.J. Currie, E.B. Kopplehus, M.A. Shugar, & J.L. Wright". These can be found at:http://www.nhbs.com/xbscripts/sbjsrch?search=75-77

Hope this is of some help.
 
Originally posted by Homo Aves

And these dinosaurs can be kept as pets (I have also a useful book on the very subject of dinosaurs as pets, the author sadly concludes that a great many spiece are unsuitable, he does reccomend Achaeopteryx though.)

Who is that book by?- I have a recollection of it being launched in the 1980s with plugs on "Blue Peter" or similar children's TV programmes.

All these things I couldn't afford to buy!
 
Technically I do have dinosaurs as pets, if birds are indeed, cladistically speaking, dinosaurs. Some authorities even insist on calling T.rex et al non-avian dinosaurs, to differentiate them from birds, the surviving dinosaurs. I must admit I get a small, nerdy kick from having my own pet cockyraptors.
 
Airborne

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040802/full/040802-9.html

So what is new? We knew this, um, about 150 years ago...

Things that have wings and flight feathers generaly use them.

(yes, your correspondent is an exception...)

But this is an interesting problem.

we have dinosaura on one hand...some have feathers.

and on the other we have birds, modern ones, typified by being toothless and having no fingers.

and in the middle we have what the Germans call Urvogel (primitive birds) which have teeth and fingers (like me.)

so where do dinos end and birds start...at the KT boundary??
 
Is this another way of asking, which came first, the chicken or the egg? :D

Answer is the egg, of course. ;)
 
Re: Airborne

Originally posted by Homo Aves
[B
Things that have wings and flight feathers generaly use them.

But it isn't a flight feather until something flies with it. The question has been whether archeopteryx existed at point at which feathers and wings became the instrument of flight. Looking at a wishboneless archeopteryx body, and considering the bewildering variety of animal behavioral adaptations, it is possible to construct other adaptive uses for both the feathers and the wings. Yes, they used them - but for what? As sexual displays? As extensions of the body to knock small prey such as insects out of the sky? As an assist to pre-flight long gliding hops? If they could fly, how high? How long? How efficient were they?

Even with the brain data, it remains possible that, if we could go back in time and observe archeopteryx behavior in the wild, we would see something that would make us laugh with astonishment and say: WTF? I never would have thought of that! Of such small steps, uncertainties, backtracks, and double-checks is science made.

For a layman's rundown of the evolution of ideas on the evolution of flight and not enough pictures of the amazingly beautiful fossils that illuminate it, Pat Shipman, Taking Wing: Archaeopteryx and the Evolution of Bird Flight, Simon & Schuster 1998.
 
escargot said:
Is this another way of asking, which came first, the chicken or the egg? :D

Answer is the egg, of course. ;)

The better question is, which came first the chicken or the chicken egg?
 
Answer is the same.

The chicken egg would be laid by a 'very, very, nearly but still not quite a' chicken.
 
'Dragon' Tyrannosaurus found in China

AFP[ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2004 04:00:39 PM ]

PARIS: A team led by the world's most successful fossil hunter said that they have found the remains of a feathery dragon-like forerunner of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex at a dinosaur graveyard in northeastern China.

The "surprising" creature is a tyrannosaurid that lived between 139 million and 128 million years ago, the researchers led by Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology report on Thursday.

Small and slender, measuring about 5.2 feet from tip to tail, the creature had the characteristic two powerful rear feet and flesh-ripping teeth made famous by the T Rex, whose 20-million-year reign ended with the twilight of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

But it had several big differences -- it had relatively long arms compared to its big descendant, as well as a long, dragon-like snout, and its scaly skin was covered with a fibrous coat.

Dinosaurs that are believed to have been the ancestors of modern birds had primitive feathery coverings like this.

But in this case, the purpose of the covering was not to provide an evolutionary step for flight but a means to keep warm, the authors suggest.

"This is the first direct fossil evidence that tyrannosaurids had protofeathers," their study, published in the weekly British scientific journal Nature says.

The discovery has been called Dilong paradoxus. The first word is a composite of the Chinese "di" (emperor) and "long" (dragon), while the second "refers to the surprising characters of this animal," the study says.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/875487.cms
 
Cretaceous duck ruffles feathers

Ducks may have been paddling about in primeval swamps when T. rex was king of the dinosaurs, scientists have announced in the journal Nature.

Fossil remains of a bird that lived 70 million years ago appear to belong to a relative of modern ducks and geese.

The partial skeleton, discovered on Vega island, western Antarctica, is likely to stir up controversy.

Many scientists believe modern bird lineages did not evolve until the end of the dinosaurs' reign.

Two camps

Although the first bird, Archaeopteryx , lived in the Jurassic period 150 million years ago, researchers disagree over when modern birds made their first appearance.

This is basically an unidentifiable bundle of bones
Professor Alan Feduccia

One camp believes many modern bird lineages existed as long as 100 million years ago. According to this vision, familiar looking birds would have been running and flying about alongside dinosaurs.

In contrast the other camp thinks that, although birds did exist during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, they were largely wiped out by whatever killed the dinosaurs.

According to this theory, only a few lineages made it through the mass extinction and, subsequently, these lonely survivors blossomed into all the modern bird families we know today.

The fossil records so far support the latter version, known as the "big bang" theory of bird evolution.

But if the new find, known as Vegavis iaai , really is a relative of the duck, it would lend considerable weight to the idea that modern birds lived with dinosaurs and survived whatever catastrophe killed them.

A team of scientists led by Dr Julia Clarke, from North Carolina State University, US, said Vegavis belonged to the waterfowl family and was "most closely related to Anatidae, which includes true ducks".

"Until now the fossil record has been ambiguous," said Dr Clarke. "But now we have a fossil which indicates that at least part of the diversification of living birds had begun before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs."

Ancient chickens

If this species was a duck, and it did live in the Cretaceous period, then other modern birds probably did too.

"Chickens and their relatives belonged to the lineage which was closest to the duck lineage," Dr Clarke told BBC News website.

"So if we had the duck lineage in the Cretaceous, the chicken lineage must have been present. Even though we don't have a chicken fossil yet, we know its lineage must have been there."

However Vegavis has not managed to convince supporters of the big bang theory of bird evolution.

"This is basically an unidentifiable bundle of bones," Alan Feduccia, a bird expert from the University of North Carolina, US, said.

"This is a well known specimen which has been kicking around since 1992, and it was originally described as belonging to an extinct group. And now all of a sudden it's a modern duck."

Sensitive

Julia Clarke and her team used a statistical analysis of certain bone features to identify Vegavis as a member of the duck family, but Professor Feduccia is unmoved by their interpretation.

"The analysis is based on very superficial features of bones, so I find it unreliable."

Professor Feduccia is sure that bird species could not have survived a major global extinction en masse.

"Birds are very sensitive to any environmental disturbance - in fact they are a good indicator of environmental problems.

"But these people don't believe whatever caused the mass extinction had any affect on the birds, and that seems ludicrous."

---------------
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/s ... 187287.stm

Published: 2005/01/20 11:00:28 GMT

© BBC MMV
 
<The ever raptoral Homo Aves gets out her poultry roaster...>
 
Emperor said:
'Dragon' Tyrannosaurus found in China

AFP[ WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 06, 2004 04:00:39 PM ]

PARIS: A team led by the world's most successful fossil hunter said that they have found the remains of a feathery dragon-like forerunner of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex at a dinosaur graveyard in northeastern China.

The "surprising" creature is a tyrannosaurid that lived between 139 million and 128 million years ago, the researchers led by Xu Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology report on Thursday.

Small and slender, measuring about 5.2 feet from tip to tail, the creature had the characteristic two powerful rear feet and flesh-ripping teeth made famous by the T Rex, whose 20-million-year reign ended with the twilight of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

But it had several big differences -- it had relatively long arms compared to its big descendant, as well as a long, dragon-like snout, and its scaly skin was covered with a fibrous coat.

Dinosaurs that are believed to have been the ancestors of modern birds had primitive feathery coverings like this.

But in this case, the purpose of the covering was not to provide an evolutionary step for flight but a means to keep warm, the authors suggest.

"This is the first direct fossil evidence that tyrannosaurids had protofeathers," their study, published in the weekly British scientific journal Nature says.

The discovery has been called Dilong paradoxus. The first word is a composite of the Chinese "di" (emperor) and "long" (dragon), while the second "refers to the surprising characters of this animal," the study says.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/875487.cms

there was a story in the 80's in the comic 2000ad called "flesh" which had hairy t. rexs
 
No Evidence Exists That Therapod Dinosaurs Evolved Into Bird

Scientists Say No Evidence Exists That Therapod Dinosaurs Evolved Into Birds

Although a few artists depicted feathered dinosaurs as far back as the 1970s, Feduccia said the strongest case for feathered dinosaurs arose in 1996 with a small black and white photo of the early Cretaceous period small dinosaur Sinosauropteryx (illustrated), which sported a coat of filamentous structures some called "dino-fuzz." Credit: Luis V. Rey's Art Gallery Dinosaurs and Paleontology
by David Williamson
Chapel Hill NC (SPX) Oct 11, 2005
No good evidence exists that fossilized structures found in China and which some paleontologists claim are the earliest known rudimentary feathers were really feathers at all, a renowned ornithologist says.
Instead, the fossilized patterns appear to be bits of decomposed skin and supporting tissues that just happen to resemble feathers to a modest degree.

Led by Dr. Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a team of scientists says that as a result of their new research and other studies, continuing, exaggerated controversies over "feathered dinosaurs" make no sense.

"We all agree that birds and dinosaurs had some reptilian ancestors in common," said Feduccia, professor of biology in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences. "But to say dinosaurs were the ancestors of the modern birds we see flying around outside today because we would like them to be is a big mistake.

"The theory that birds are the equivalent of living dinosaurs and that dinosaurs were feathered is so full of holes that the creationists have jumped all over it, using the evolutionary nonsense of 'dinosaurian science' as evidence against the theory of evolution," he said. "To paraphrase one such individual, 'This isn't science . . . This is comic relief.'"

A report on the team's latest research appears in the Journal of Morphology published online Monday (Oct. 10). Other authors are Drs. Theagarten Lingham-Soliar of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Richard Hinchliffe of the University College of Wales.

Using powerful microscopes, the team examined the skin of modern reptiles, the effects of decomposition on skin and the fossil evidence relating to alleged feather progenitors, also known as "protofeathers."

They found that fossilized patterns that resemble feathers somewhat also occur in fossils known not to be closely related to birds and hence are far more likely to be skin-related tissues, Feduccia said. Much of the confusion arose from the fact that in China in the same area, two sets of fossils were found. Some of these had true feathers and were indeed birds known as "microraptors," while others did not and should not be considered birds at all.

"Collagen is a scleroprotein, the chief structural protein of the connective tissue layer of skin," he said. "Naturally, because of its low solubility in water and its organization as tough, inelastic fiber networks, we would expect it to be preserved occasionally from flayed skin during the fossilization process."

Although a few artists depicted feathered dinosaurs as far back as the 1970s, Feduccia said the strongest case for feathered dinosaurs arose in 1996 with a small black and white photo of the early Cretaceous period small dinosaur Sinosauropteryx, which sported a coat of filamentous structures some called "dino-fuzz."

"The photo subsequently appeared in various prominent publications as the long-sought 'definitive' evidence of dinosaur 'feathers' and that birds were descended from dinosaurs," he said.

"Yet no one ever bothered to provide evidence -- either structural or biological -- that these structures had anything to do with feathers. In our new work, we show that these and other filamentous structures were not protofeathers, but rather the remains of collagenous fiber meshworks that reinforced the skin."

Belief in the existence of the "dino-fuzz feathers" caused some scientists to conclude that they served as insulation, and hence dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

The researchers also examined evidence from five independent, agreeing studies involving structural and genetic analyses related to the "tridactyl," or three-fingered, hand, which is composed of digits 1, 2 and 3 in dinosaurs, Feduccia said. That is the most critical characteristic linking birds to dinosaurs.

They found that embryos of developing birds differed significantly in that bird wings arose from digits 2, 3 and 4, the equivalent of index, middle and ring fingers of humans. To change so radically during evolution would be highly unlikely.

"If birds descended from dinosaurs, we would expect the same 1, 2 and 3 pattern," he said.

Current dinosaurian dogma requires that all the intricate adaptations of birds' wings and feathers for flight evolved in a flightless dinosaur and then somehow became useful for flight only much later, Feduccia said. That is "close to being non-Darwinian."

Also, the current feathered dinosaurs theory makes little sense time-wise either because it holds that all stages of feather evolution and bird ancestry occurred some 125 million years ago in the early Cretaceous fossils unearthed in China.

"That's some 25 million years after the time of Archaeopteryx, which already was a bird in the modern sense," he said. Superficially bird-like dinosaurs occurred some 25 million to 80 million years after the earliest known bird, which is 150 million years old."

Feduccia said the publication and promotion of feathered dinosaurs by the popular press and by prestigious journals and magazines, including National Geographic, Nature and Science, have made it difficult for opposing views to get a proper hearing.

"With the advent of 'feathered dinosaurs,' we are truly witnessing the beginnings of the meltdown of the field of paleontology," he said. "Just as the discovery a four-chambered heart in a dinosaur described in 2000 in an article in Science turned out to be an artifact, feathered dinosaurs too have become part of the fantasia of this field.

"Much of this is part of the delusional fantasy of the world of dinosaurs, the wishful hope that one can finally study dinosaurs at the backyard bird feeder.

"It is now clear that the origin of birds is a much more complicated question than has been previously thought," Feduccia said.

The UNC scientist is the author of more than 150 papers and six major books, including The Age of Birds, which Harvard University Press published in 1980 and The Origin and Evolution of Birds, published by Yale University Press in 1996.

Among other discoveries, Feduccia found by a careful examination that Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird and one of the world's most famous fossils, could fly. Previously, many scientists thought the animal to be an Earth-bound dinosaur.

He determined its flying ability by observing that the fossil's feathers had leading edges significantly shorter than their trailing edges, which is characteristic of all modern flying birds. The edges of feather of birds incapable of flight, such as ostriches, are symmetrical.


http://www.terradaily.com/news/life-05zzzzzzm.html
 
This site has some articles on the relationship between birds and dinosaurs (admittedly argued from the point of view that birds are descended from dinosaurs), including two which deal with the problem of dinosaur and bird hands:

http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/jdp.htm
 
Feduccas been flogging that dead dino for ages....

Dont let that put you off his often very careful arguments and fine work on prehistoric birdies though.
 
Bird-like dinosaur forces rethink

A rooster-sized dinosaur with a long, slender snout and wing-like limbs is forcing a rethink on bird evolution.
The 90 million-year-old reptile belongs to the same sickle-clawed group of dinosaurs as Velociraptor and feathered dinosaurs from China.

Buitreraptor gonzalezorum, from the Nequén Basin in central Argentina may provide tantalising evidence that powered flight evolved twice.

Details of the discovery appear in the academic journal Nature.

One theory suggests the lineage of dinosaurs the new animal belonged to, the dromaeosaurs, originated in the Cretaceous Period (144 to 65 million years ago).

But this discovery suggests their lineage can be traced further back in time, to the Jurassic (206 to 144 million years ago), experts say.

Continental movement

It would mean dromaeosaurs were around when the present-day continents of Earth were organised into a single landmass. This giant landmass later split into northern and southern parts, called Laurasia and Gondwana respectively.

"The preservation of Buitreraptor is superb. The rich fauna of this area, known as La Buitrera, includes other carnivorous dinosaurs," said co-discoverer Sebastián Apesteguía of the Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

These include Giganotosaurus, a 13-14m-long behemoth that is the largest known meat-eating dinosaur.

Until recently, the dinosaur group had only been found in Cretaceous rocks of Asia and North America, continents that were part of Laurasia.

The new discovery, named Buitreraptor, provides definitive evidence that dromaeosaurs also lived in South America - part of Gondwana.

They must have originated when all of the continents were still assembled in a single landmass - during the Jurassic. When the landmass split in two, the dromaeosaurs diverged into northern and southern groups.

Family rift

Analysis by the authors of the Nature paper show Buitreraptor and Rahonavis, a fossil animal from Madagascar previously considered a primitive bird, form a southern branch of the dromaeosaur family tree.

This branch is distinct from Laurasian dromaeosaurids, including Velociraptor and some of the famous feathered dinosaurs from China. Birds are commonly thought to have evolved from this group.

The authors say the discovery Rahonavis and Buitreraptor have long and wing-like forelimbs could imply that flight evolved twice, once in birds and once among this group of Gondwanan dromaeosaurs.

The specimen will be on show at the Chicago Field Museum's Evolving Planet exhibition that opens in March.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-p ... 337888.stm
 
Fossil find prompts rethink on dinosaur feathers

Reuters

LONDON - A newly discovered, perfectly preserved fossil of a 150 million-year-old dinosaur found in southern Germany may force scientists to rethink how and when feathers evolved.

The nearly complete remains of the chicken-size dinosaur named Juravenator, which is described in the journal Nature on Wednesday, were preserved in limestone. But unlike other members of the group of two-legged meat-eating predators known as coelurosaurs, it had no feathers.

"It is an absolutely new dinosaur that was not known before," said Ursula Gohlich, a palaeontologist at the University of Munich in Germany.

Remains of small dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic period are rare finds. The new fossil is nearly complete, apart from a missing part of its long tail, and shows soft tissue and an imprint of the skin but no feathers.

"Scientists had thought that all representatives of the group coelurosaurs should have feathers," Gohlich told Reuters.

"Now we have a little dinosaur that belongs to coelurosaurs that does not show feathers. This is a problem."

COMPLEX EVOLUTION

Feathers were thought to have evolved very early within coelurosaurs. All members of the group were thought to be feathered.

But Gohlich and Luis Chiappe, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in California, believe the evolution of feathers may be more complex than previously thought.

Feathers may have evolved early but then were replaced by scales in some creatures because they were not needed.

"Another possibility perhaps is that some representatives of coelurosaurs were not entirely covered with feathers, only certain areas," said Gohlich.

The newly discovered Juravenator was very young so may not have lived long enough to develop feathers. But Gohlich said that despite its age, she would have expected it to have had feathers.

"We think that feathers evolved. We have several fossils that support this theory. But our fossil asks some questions," she added.

The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, was also found in southern Germany. It too lived about 150 million years ago and had feathers but it is uncertain whether they were used to fly or to keep warm.

Xing Xu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said whatever the explanation, the discovery of Juravenator has enriched knowledge of early feather evolution. It could also indicate where future research could be concentrated.

"Juravenator may complicate the picture, but it makes it more complete and realistic," he said in a commentary in the journal.

----------
Copyright 2006 Reuters News Service.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1728474
 
This seems the best place for this story:
Ancient birds' wings preserved in amber
By Paul Rincon Science editor, BBC News website
28 June 2016

Two wings from birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs have been found preserved in amber.
The "spectacular" finds from Myanmar are from baby birds that got trapped in the sticky sap of a tropical forest 99 million years ago.
Exquisite detail has been preserved in the feathers, including traces of colour in spots and stripes.
The wings had sharp little claws, allowing the juvenile birds to clamber about in the trees.

The tiny fossils, which are between two and three centimetres long, could shed further light on the evolution of birds from their dinosaur ancestors.
The specimens, from well-known amber deposits in north-east Myanmar (also known as Burma), are described in the journal Nature Communications.
Co-author Prof Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, said: "The individual feathers show every filament and whisker, whether they are flight feathers or down feathers, and there are even traces of colour - spots and stripes."

The hand anatomy shows the wings come from enantiornithine birds, which comprised a major bird grouping in the Cretaceous Period. However, the enantiornithines died out at the same time as the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.

Dr Steve Brusatte, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Edinburgh University, described the fossils as "spectacular".
He told BBC News: " They're fantastic - who would have ever thought that 99-million-year-old wings could be trapped in amber?
"These are showcase specimens and some of the most surprising fossils I've seen in a long time. We've known for a few decades that many dinosaurs had feathers, but most of our fossils are impressions of feathers on crushed limestone slabs.
"Three dimensional preservation in amber provides a whole new perspective and these fossils make it clear that very primitive birds living alongside the dinosaurs had wings and feather arrangements very similar to today's birds."

The international team of researchers used advanced X-ray scanning techniques to examine the structure and arrangement of the bones and feathers.
Claw marks in the amber suggest the birds were still alive when they were engulfed by the sticky sap.

Dr Xing Lida, the study's lead author, explained: "The fact that the tiny birds were clambering about in the trees suggests that they had advanced development, meaning they were ready for action as soon as they hatched.
"These birds did not hang about in the nest waiting to be fed, but set off looking for food, and sadly died perhaps because of their small size and lack of experience.
"Isolated feathers in other amber samples show that adult birds might have avoided the sticky sap, or pulled themselves free."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-36651471
 
Tiny dino birds

A tiny, toothed bird that lived 99 million years ago appears to be the smallest known Mesozoic dinosaur, an era from about 252 million to 66 million years ago.

The creature’s 12-millimeter-long skull was found encased in a chunk of amber originally discovered in northern Myanmar, researchers report March 11 in Nature.

Of modern birds — the only dinosaurs still living today — the bee hummingbird is the smallest. The new species, dubbed Oculudentavis khaungraae, was similar in size. But three-dimensional images of the fossilized skull created with computed tomography, a type of X-ray imaging, revealed that the Mesozoic bird had little else in common with today’s nectar-sipping hummingbirds.

Instead, the images reveal a surprising number of teeth, suggesting the little bird was a predator, the researchers report. “It had more teeth than any other Mesozoic bird, regardless of size,” says paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing. As for its prey, researchers can only guess, she adds. O. khaungraae probably dined on arthropods and invertebrates, and possibly even small fish.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-dinosaur-smallest-size-no-bigger-than-hummingbird
 
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Determining the molting strategy in the transitional species Archaeopteryx has provided new insights into the early development of flight.
New Insights Into the Origins of Flight From Ancient Archaeopteryx Fossil

Research reveals earliest flight-related molting strategy in 150-million-year ancient bird.

Flying birds molt their feathers when they are old and worn because they inhibit flight performance, and the molt strategy is typically a sequential molt. Molting is thought to be unorganized in the first feathered dinosaurs because they had yet to evolve flight, so determining how molting evolved can lead to better understanding of flight origins. ...

However, evidence of the transition to modern molting strategies is scarce in the fossil record. ...

Recently, ... Dr. Michael PITTMAN ... , Thomas G KAYE ... and William R WAHL ... jointly discovered the earliest record of feather molting from the famous early fossil bird Archaeopteryx found in southern Germany in rocks that used to be tropical lagoons ~150 million years ago. The findings were published in Communications Biology. ...

The most common molt strategy in modern birds is a sequential molt, where feathers are lost from both wings at the same time in a symmetrical pattern. The sequence of feather loss follows two different strategies: The first strategy is a numerically sequential molt where feathers are lost in numerical order and is the most common among passerines birds, also known as songbirds and perching birds; the second strategy is a center-out strategy where a center feather is lost first, and then subsequent feathers are shed outwards from this center point; this is more common in non-passerine birds such as falcons. ...

Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence imaging ... revealed feather sheaths on the Thermopolis specimen of Archaeopteryx that are otherwise invisible under white light. “We found feather sheaths mirrored on both wings. These sheaths are separated by one feather and are not in numerical sequential order. This indicates that Archaeopteryx used a sequential center-out molting strategy, which is used in living falcons to preserve maximum flight performance,” said Kaye. This strategy was therefore already present at the earliest origins of flight. ...

FULL STORY:
https://scitechdaily.com/new-insights-into-the-origins-of-flight-from-ancient-archaeopteryx-fossil/

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01467-2
 
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