Feathered fossils found in China confirm that birds evolved from dinosaurs

September 14th, 2009 US turns over seized prehistoric relics to ChinaWASHINGTON — U.S. Customs officials returned to China on Monday fossils dating from as early as 100 million years ago that had entered the country illegally.

September 11th, 2009 Extinct New Zealand eagle may have eaten humansBANGKOK — Sophisticated computer scans of fossils have helped solve a mystery over the nature of a giant, ancient raptor known as the Haast's eagle which became extinct about 500 years ago, researchers said Friday. The researchers say they have determined that the eagle — which lived in the mountains of New Zealand and weighed about 40 pounds (18 kilograms) — was a predator and not a mere scavenger as many thought.

August 26th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of paleontologists and ornithologists led by Yale University has discovered evidence of vivid iridescent colors in feather fossils more than 40 million years old. The finding signifies the first evidence of a preserved color-producing nanostructure in a fossilized feather.

August 21st, 2009 WASHINGTON - Paleontologists working in southern Utah, US, have unearthed a Dolichorhynchops plesiosaur-a gigantic Dinosaur Era marine reptile-with 289 stones in its gut. "At the moment, it seems as though the stones served some sort of digestive purpose, helping to grind up bits of shell or bony material within the gut," Rebecca Schmeisser, a University of Nebraska paleontologist, told Discovery News.

July 14th, 2009 LONDON - The discovery of three fossil burrows in south-eastern Australia has suggested that small dinosaurs living in polar areas survived the lean months when little food was available by burrowing during the winter. According to a report in New Scientist, fossils from "Dinosaur Cove" in Victoria show that small plant-eating dinosaurs called hypsilophodontids were common in the area about 110 million years ago, a time when the region was within the Antarctic Circle.

July 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of paleontologists has found evidence of dinosaur burrows in Victoria, Australia, which would help shed light on long-term geologic change, and how organisms may have adapted as the Earth has undergone periods of global cooling and warming. The find, by paleontologist Anthony Martin and his team from Emory University, US, suggests that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period, when some dinosaurs lived in polar environments.

July 7th, 2009 LONDON - A new research has determined that due to their huge sizes, dinosaurs were the 'couch potatoes' of the prehistoric world. According to a report in the Telegraph, the research was done by Dr McNab from the University of Florida.

June 23rd, 2009 LONDON - Dinosaurs, the largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, according to the latest research. Scientists have found that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, which means that dinosaurs have been possibly oversized.

June 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists have found the fossilized hand of a long-necked, ostrich-like dinosaur in China, which may help solve the mystery of how bird wings evolved from dinosaur limbs. According to a report in National geographic News, the ancient digits belonged to a 159-million-year-old theropod dinosaur dubbed Limusaurus inextricabilis.

June 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested that humungous dinosaurs may have offset the consequences of being so large by quick healing of their bones. The study used high-resolution computed tomography (CT) imaging to guide sampling of bone lesions in the vertebrae of a hadrosaur ("duck-billed") dinosaur for histological and isotopic analysis.

April 22nd, 2009 LONDON - A fossil found in China, dating from the middle of the Cretaceous period, may belong to a dinosaur that was probably the ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. According to a report by BBC News, uncovered near the city of Jiayuguan, the fossil finds come from a novel tyrannosaur dubbed Xiongguanlong baimoensis.

April 14th, 2009 LONDON - Just like American hummingbirds, African sunbirds have also learnt to hover around a flower to collect nectar, and scientists have found that the tree tobacco plant prompts the birds' ability to hang around. Tree tobacco, the South American plant has made its way to South Africa, where sunbirds pollinate it.

April 5th, 2009 LONDON - Dinosaurs may have evolved wings as a way of attracting the opposite sex, say biologists. According to research from University of Manchester, the ability to fly was part of a evolutionary force, known as sexual selection, where traits deemed as attractive by the opposite sex become more common and more pronounced through generations because they are favoured by mating animals.

March 19th, 2009 LONDON - An analysis of a dinosaur fossil found in China has revealed a primitive form of feather that may have evolved much earlier than was previously thought, as it dates back to 100 million years. The dinosaur fossil was discovered by Xiao-Ting Zheng at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature and colleagues in China.

March 12th, 2009 LONDON - A new analysis of the Homo erectus fossils popularly known as the 'Peking Man', found in China's Zhoukoudian caves, has determined that it dates back to 770,000 years, which is at least 250,000 years earlier than thought. According to a report in Nature News, the new date means that this early human ancestor - the first lineage to migrate out of Africa - prospered in an earlier, colder climate, and its physical development in China matched that in Africa, where the species first evolved.