Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Professor Emily Jane McTavish and colleagues at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology have mapped the evolution of every known bird species. They created a complete evolutionary tree of bird species by ...

Birds may look remarkably familiar today, but their skeletons carry clues to a far more turbulent evolutionary history. A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan has used artificial ...

The study found that bird species who nest in tree cavities have independently evolved heightened aggression across lineages, particularly in females. Scientists have long wondered whether evolution ...

Birds have evolved into more than 10,000 living species, ranging from enormous flightless ostriches to predators capable of ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Fossil discoveries unlock chapters of our planet’s storied ...

BIRDS’ evolutionary tree has just been shaken to its roots by the discovery of surprising relationships that may force ornithologists to re-evaluate much of what they thought they knew about avian ...

If feathers did not evolve first for flight, what other advantage could they have provided the creatures that had them? Some ...

Fri, May 2, 2025 at 12:00 PM UTC Those many millions of years have given birds time to evolve into some 11,000 species, and keeping track of all those species—not to mention their evolutionary history ...

Scientists have long wondered whether evolution would follow the same path if history had a chance for a “do-over.” New research suggests that it does, when it comes to the brain and its regulation of ...