Since the 1960s, fossil discoveries have confirmed the scientific consensus that birds evolved from the group of predatory ...

The vane on the leading edge — or “forward,” in the direction of a bird’s flight — is narrower and the fibers are generally ...

Feathers for flight Field Museum fossil preparators and study coauthors Akiko Shinya and Constance Van Beek worked on the specimen for more than a year. They spent hundreds of hours scanning and ...

While most Archaeopteryx fossil specimens “are incomplete and crushed,” this fossil was missing just one digit and remained unflattened by time, said lead study author Dr. Jingmai O’Connor ...

The Chicago Archaeopteryx likely preserves many other important details about bird evolution, O’Connor added. With an abundance of data already collected from the fossil and analysis still ...

"Archaeopteryx is not the first dinosaur with feathers, nor is it the first dinosaur with wings. However, we think it is the earliest known dinosaur that could use its feathers for flying." ...

Flying dinosaur fossil with intact feathers reveals how first birds took flight Researchers say set of never-before-seen feathers on upper arm proved key to Archaeopteryx’s flight Vishwam Sankaran ...

The Chicago Archaeopteryx features more soft tissue and delicate skeletal details than any known fossil of its kind, and paleontologists discovered it has a set of feathers key to flight in modern ...

In the case of Archaeopteryx, however, the tertial feathers alone plugged the gap. "These feathers are missing in feathered dinosaurs that are closely related to birds but aren't quite birds ...

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. The ...

Archaeopteryx boasted reptilian traits like teeth, a long and bony tail, and claws on its hands, alongside bird-like traits like wings formed by large, asymmetrical feathers.