The Endangered night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) is one of the rarest birds in Australia, with fewer than 20 known alive ...

An illustration of night parrots by Elizabeth Gould, completed in 1890. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons The night parrot—a brilliantly colored, nocturnal bird—once thrived in Australia’s outback.

For more than a century, scientists have been unsuccessfully hunting for skull fossils for the thunder bird species Genyornis newtoni. About 50,000 years ago, these titans, also known as mihirungs, ...

Believed to have existed since ancient times, the prehistoric Takahe birds of New Zealand have become a success story for conservation. The birds, which were declared extinct in 1898, have now begun ...

There’s a new champion in the featherweight boxing division. According to a new study, paleontologists have discovered that an extinct flightless bird from Jamaica swung its unusually thick, club-like ...

In 1838, John Gould, the father of Australian ornithology, visited Australia with the intention of gathering material for his great work on Australian birds. In the resulting publication, The Birds of ...

Fossilized feathers of an extinct bird show it molted differently than modern birds. The prehistoric bird lost its feathers all at once, while many modern birds molt in waves. Regrowing feathers uses ...

A prehistoric New Zealand bird thought to be extinct in 1898 (but found again in the middle of the 20th century) is doing its best to avoid going the way of the dodo — with lobbying from some tribal ...