The ability of feathers to perform many functions either simultaneously or at different times
throughout the year or life of a bird is integral to the evolutionary history of birds. Many …

Abstract The Jehol Biota is an Early Cretaceous terrestrial fossil assemblage of paramount
significance, and its core distribution areas are western Liaoning, northern Hebei, and …

Discoveries of bird-like theropod dinosaurs and basal avialans in recent decades have
helped to put the iconic 'Urvogel'Archaeopteryx into context,,,, and have yielded important …

The most comprehensive account of the origin of ancient and modern birds—the" living
dinosaurs." A small set of fossilized bones discovered almost thirty years ago led …

Scaling relationships between skeletal dimensions and body mass in extant birds are often
used to estimate body mass in fossil crown-group birds, as well as in stem-group avialans …

Our knowledge of Cretaceous plumage is limited by the fossil record itself: compression
fossils surrounding skeletons lack the finest morphological details and seldom preserve …

The geometry of feather barbs (barb length and barb angle) determines feather vane
asymmetry and vane rigidity, which are both critical to a feather's aerodynamic performance …

As a fundamental ecological aspect of most organisms, locomotor function significantly
constrains morphology. At the same time, the evolution of novel locomotor abilities has …

The impact of sexual selection on the evolution of birds has been widely acknowledged.
Although sexual selection has been hypothesized as a driving force in the occurrences of …

The reproductive biology of living birds differs dramatically from that of other extant
vertebrates. Although some attributes of modern avian reproduction had their origin within …