evolution of birds

This is a highly significant taxon for theories about the evolution of birds.

The fossils could be critical to an understanding of the evolution of birds and flight.

This represented, they said, a previously unknown intermediate stage in the evolution of birds and flight.

Archaeopteryx continues to play an important part in scientific debates about the origin and evolution of birds.

The avian respiratory system, present in both lines, must therefore have evolved before the split, and well before the evolution of birds themselves.

As a result, discussion of the evolution of birds and of bird flight centered on Archaeopteryx at least until the mid-1990s.

The rediscovery prompted Dr. Ostrom to study the evolution of birds and bird flight.

For more details on the evolution of birds, see Evolution of birds.

The Origin and Evolution of Birds.

An example of macroevolution is the appearance of feathers during the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs.

Additionally, modern birds show a similarity to ancient saurischian pelvic structures indicating the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.

The discovery of these early birds, only one of which could fly, changed the thinking of paleontologists about the evolution of birds.

Prum argued, finally, that Feduccia's methodology and view of the origin and early evolution of birds are pseudoscientific.

The evolution of birds is thought to have begun in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from theropod dinosaurs.

"These new fossils represent stages in the evolution of birds from feathered, ground-living, bipedal dinosaurs," the scientists concluded in their journal report.

For instance, paleontologists investigating the evolution of birds predicted that feathers would first be seen in primitive forms on flightless predecessor organisms such as feathered dinosaurs.

Padian's area of interest is in vertebrate evolution, especially the origins of flight and the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs.

The result, first published in the journal Science in June 2006, was the discovery of Gansus yumenensis, a missing link in the early evolution of birds.

Filling a gap in the evolution of birds, scientists have dug up fossils of a bird that lived 110 million years ago and looked remarkably like a small modern-day waterfowl.

Feduccia's first contribution relative to the origin and early evolution of birds, and their relationship with dinosaurs, was a critical review of the evidence then available for dinosaurian endothermy in 1973.

Another goal of this expedition was to find and capture a hoatzin, a bird whose clawed wings caused it to be considered an important link in the evolution of birds from reptiles.

Evolution of birds inferred as theropods evolving from the non-avian dinosaurs are represented by the Archaeopteryx (a prehistoric bird) and dinosaurs such as the Deinonychus or the Dromaeosaurus.

With the unearthing of several well preserved early bird fossils in the last decades of the 20th century and early 21st century, our knowledge of the evolution of birds has increased dramatically.

Edward was now drawing a diagram of a feather on the board - with some difficulty and much rubbing out - to illustrate its complexity and lead up to a discussion of the evolution of birds.

Fossils found in China near the end of the 20th century have been particularly important as they have provided new information about the earliest evolution of animals, early fish, dinosaurs and the evolution of birds.