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birds

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Artist’s conception of a large carnivorous dinosaur skull and the skeleton of a much smaller theropod staring at each other.
dinosaurs

Dinosaur Bone Study Reveals That Not All Giants Grew Alike

By Anna Gibbs
March 20, 2023
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A survey of prehistoric bones reveals that T. rex and some of its cousins had more than one way to reach enormous sizes. Evolution may have preserved that variation in modern animals too.

A blueprint-like rendering of the biomechanics of a bird wing.
biomechanics

Geometric Analysis Reveals How Birds Mastered Flight

By Yasemin Saplakoglu
August 3, 2022
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Partnerships between engineers and biologists have begun to reveal how birds evolved their superb maneuverability.

Video showing a ring of cells forming regularly spaced pits along its circumference.
developmental biology

Embryo Cells Set Patterns for Growth by Pushing and Pulling

By Monique Brouillette
July 12, 2022
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Patterns that guide the development of feathers and other features can be set by mechanical forces in the embryo, not just by gradients of chemicals.

Photo of crows.
cognitive science

Animals Count and Use Zero. How Far Does Their Number Sense Go?

By Jordana Cepelewicz
August 9, 2021
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Crows recently demonstrated an understanding of the concept of zero. It’s only the latest evidence of animals’ talents for numerical abstraction — which may still differ from our own grasp of numbers.

Art for "The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology"
In Theory

The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology

By Thomas Lin
August 23, 2018
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Quanta’s In Theory video series returns with an exploration of a mysterious mathematical pattern found throughout nature.

Art for "A Thermodynamic Answer to Why Birds Migrate"
ecology

A Thermodynamic Answer to Why Birds Migrate

By Jordana Cepelewicz
May 7, 2018
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New modeling studies suggest that birds migrate to strike a favorable balance between their input and output of energy.

520px photo of Jarvis holding a zebra finch
Q&A

In Birds’ Songs, Brains and Genes, He Finds Clues to Speech

By Jordana Cepelewicz
January 30, 2018
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The neuroscientist Erich Jarvis found that songbirds’ vocal skills and humans’ spoken language are both rooted in neural pathways for controlling learned movements.

universality

A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order

By Natalie Wolchover
July 12, 2016
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Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds’ eyes, boxes of marbles and other surprising places, that is neither regular nor random.

evolution

How Dinosaurs Shrank and Became Birds

By Emily Singer
June 2, 2015
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Modern birds emerged in a snap of evolutionary time through a series of simple genetic changes.


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