The contour feathers that streamline a bird’s body, for example, have vaned tips like flight feathers and noninterlocking barbs like down ones. The bristle feathers that typically occur on the ...

Whether they’re opening for takeoff, spreading wide for a lazy soar or flapping to brake for landing, bird wings make flying ...

The Chicago Archaeopteryx provides rare 3D insights into skull evolution, soft tissue structure, and the first evidence of ...

Scientists were finally given access to a remarkable Archaeopteryx fossil that’s allowed them to better understand exactly ...

But no theropod fossils preserved wings, let alone feathers. Without more evidence, Dr. Ostrom and other paleontologists argued fiercely about the origin of birds for decades. Sinosauropteryx ...

Both parts lack the grooves and hooks that hold the flat vane of contour feathers together in most birds. When the feathers get wet, the coils unwind and rotate to be perpendicular to the vane ...

Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought. Yet fossilization can change ...

Scans of the most well-preserved fossil of a prehistoric flying reptile with intact feathers have revealed how the first birds managed to fly while their non-bird dinosaur cousins could not.