Latest Origin of avian flight Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online When you inspect the legs of most birds you will find everything from the knee down is scaly rather than feathery. There is an exception to this rule however. Some birds of prey, such as eagles, have more feathering below the knee extending down to the feet. As for those with scaly legs, it is a remnant of their ancestry, when birds evolved from small two-legged dinosaurs millions of years ago. For the most part, experts...

New research from Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies has revealed how dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus used their famous killer claws, leading to a new hypothesis on the evolution of flight in birds. In a paper published Dec. 14 in PLoS ONE, MSU researchers Denver W. Fowler, Elizabeth A. Freedman, John B. Scannella and Robert E. Kambic (now at Brown University in Rhode Island), describe how comparing modern birds of prey helped develop a new behavior model for...

Why don't you ever see baby pigeons? For the same reason you don't see many chicks: they can't fly. It can take months for their partially developed wings and flight muscles to become airworthy, and by then the youngsters are almost fullygrown. However, long before their maiden flight, pigeon chicks probably put their developing wings to use, flapping as they run up steep branches. Brandon Jackson from the University of Montana, USA, explains that Ken Dial and his son first noticed this...

New York Medical College scientist proposes a new theory of the origin of birdsA developmental biologist at New York Medical College is proposing a new theory of the origin of birds, which traditionally has been thought to be driven by the evolution of flight. Instead, Stuart A. Newman, Ph.D., credits the emergence of enlarged skeletal muscles as the basis for their upright two-leggedness, which led to the opportunity for other adaptive changes like flying or swimming. And it is all based on...

The scientists argue that flight originated above, in the trees; such animals would have been glidersA joint team from the University of Kansas and Northeastern University in China says that it has settled the long-standing question of how bird flight began.In the Jan. 25 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the KU-China researchers push their research into the origins of bird flight and the early evolution of birds with decisive flight tests of a model of the four-winged...

A letter published in the advanced online publication Nature has revealed new insight into the evolution of flight in birds.    The issue has remained controversial among scientists, and previous theories have usually been based on interpretations of various fossil forms.   However, this new report is based on experimental observations of young birds, and suggests wing-stroke dynamics are the key to understanding the evolution of avian flight.The research was led by Ken Dial,...

Biologists examining evidence for the claim that birds evolved from dinosaurs have reached some surprising new conclusions. However, they caution that "the problem of avian origins is far from being resolved." Their analysis is published online October 10, 2005 in the Journal of Morphology, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and available via Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/morphology). Dinosaurs have long captured the imagination while their...