It was a spirited debate between friends that surfaced every time we got together. It was not about politics, the economy or the weather, but the more significant question, do birds have bills or ...

Bird beaks come in almost every shape and size—from the straw-like beak of a hummingbird to the slicing, knife-like beak of an eagle. We have found, however, that this incredible diversity is ...

A new study, using the digitized scans of beaks from over 8,700 bird species, is shedding light on how evolution changes at different scales. While the general principles of evolution by natural ...

Sometimes nature surprises us with extraordinary products of evolution. One prime example is the extraordinary sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera). These relatively small birds have carved a ...

Every day, scientists uncover startling new information that reshapes our understanding of the ancient world. The latest groundbreaking discovery concerns a bird from the late Cretaceous period with a ...

The material a bird selects for its nest depends on the dimensions of its beak, according to researchers. Using data on nest materials for nearly 6,000 species of birds, a team based at the University ...

A 67-million-year-old bird skull has overturned an established theory about how modern birds evolved. Unlike most modern birds, the flightless group that includes ostriches and emus can’t move their ...

Kiwis, ibises and sandpipers share this sensory power with birds that lived millions of years ago. By Veronique Greenwood The ibis and the kiwi are dogged diggers, probing in sand and soil for worms ...

Given the unusual attention granted to turkeys this week, let’s talk dinosaurs. Today’s birds are, of course, descendants of the only branch of the dino tree that made it through the end-Cretaceous ...

The material a bird selects for its nest depends on the dimensions of its beak, according to researchers. The material a bird selects for its nest depends on the dimensions of its beak, according to ...