Mate choices of barn swallows tied to diverging appearances

If you are a male barn swallow in the United States or the Mediterranean with dark red breast feathers, you're apt to wow potential mates. But if you have long outer tail feathers in the United States, or short ones in the ...

Peacocks shake feathers to mesmerize mates

Call it a shimmy meant to hypnotize. When courting a female, peacocks fan their colorful rear feathers and shake them, but somehow keep their plumes' iridescent circles, or eyespots, nearly still, like a fixed stare.

Small bird fills big fossil gap

The 115-million-year-old remains of a tiny toothed bird with a two-pronged tail resembling a pair of darts have filled knowledge gaps about feather evolution, scientists reported Tuesday.

A new species of hummingbird?

The Bahama Woodstar is a hummingbird found in the Bahamas, and comprises two subspecies. One of these, Calliphlox evelynae evelynae, is found throughout the islands of the Bahamas, and especially in the northern islands. ...

New feathered predatory fossil sheds light on dinosaur flight

A new raptorial dinosaur fossil with exceptionally long feathers has provided exciting insights into dinosaur flight. A paper published in Nature Communications on July 15, 2014 asserts that the fossil—discovered by an ...

Sex of early birds suggests dinosaur reproductive style

In a paper published in Nature Communications on January 22, 2013, a team of paleontologists including Dr. Luis Chiappe, Director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's (NHM) Dinosaur Institute, has discovered ...

Dinosaur shook tail feathers for mating show

(Phys.org)—A University of Alberta researcher's examination of fossilized dinosaur tail bones has led to a breakthrough finding: some feathered dinosaurs used tail plumage to attract mates, much like modern-day peacocks ...

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