When one is described as having “a feather in one’s cap,” a commendable and distinctive accomplishment has been earned. The feather, today unique to the animal group, birds, evolved to enable birds to ...

Journal of Avian Biology, Vol. 41, No. 3 (MAY 2010), pp. 342-347 (6 pages) Migration causes temporal and energetic constraints during plumage development, which can compromise feather structure and ...

Birds of a feather may flock together, but the feathers of birds differ altogether. New research from an international team led by USC scientists set out to learn how feathers developed and helped ...

"Most previous studies suggest that insulation might have been the primary function for the first feathers, but our discovery supports that display represents one of the earliest functions for ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers ...

Over the last two decades, spectacular palaeontological discoveries, mainly from China, have revolutionized our understanding in the origin and evolution of feathers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Major novel ...

The origin of feathers and the origin of flight have been a contentious chicken-and-egg issue in the scientific world for decades. Did feathers develop as a flight mechanism -- or were they first used ...