Download or read book The Origin of Birds written by Gerhard Heilmann and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Origin and Evolution of Birds written by Alan Feduccia and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 490 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of all that is known about the origin of birds and of avian flight. It draws on fossil evidence and studies of the structure and biochemistry of living birds to present knowledge and data on avian evolution and to propose a new model of this evolutionary process.

Download or read book The Origin of Birds and the Evolution of Flight written by Kevin Padian and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book On the Wing written by Dr. David E. Alexander and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On the Wing is the first book to take a comprehensive look at the evolution of flight in all four groups of powered flyers: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats."--Book jacket.

Download or read book Feathered Dinosaurs written by John A. Long and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this book, palaeontologist and popular science author John Long unravels the mysteries of the origin of birds and the evolution of flight. He details the transition from small, feathered dinosaur to primitive flying bird - a shift that is now widely accepted as an anatomically seamless evolutionary event."--Jacket.

Download or read book New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds written by Jacques Gauthier and published by Yale Univ Peabody Museum. This book was released on 2001 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Taking Wing written by Pat Shipman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1999-01-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1861, just a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a scientist named Hermann von Meyer made an amazing discovery. Hidden in the Bavarian region of Germany was a fossil skeleton so exquisitely preserved that its wings and feathers were as obvious as its reptilian jaws and tail. This transitional creature offered tangible proof of Darwin's theory of evolution. Hailed as the First Bird, Archaeopteryx has remained the subject of heated debates for the last 140 years. Are birds actually living dinosaurs? Where does the fossil record really lead? Did flight originate from the "ground up" or "trees down"? Pat Shipman traces the age-old human desire to soar above the earth and to understand what has come before us. Taking Wing is science as adventure story, told with all the drama by which scientific understanding unfolds.

Download or read book The Rise of Birds written by Sankar Chatterjee and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2015-04 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His compelling, occasionally controversial, revelations--accompanied by spectacular illustrations--are a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in the evolution of the feathered dinosaurs, from vertebrate paleontologists and ornithologists to naturalists and birders.

Download or read book Avian Evolution written by Gerald Mayr and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowledge of the evolutionary history of birds has much improved in recent decades. Fossils from critical time periods are being described at unprecedented rates and modern phylogenetic analyses have provided a framework for the interrelationships of the extant groups. This book gives an overview of the avian fossil record and its paleobiological significance, and it is the only up-to-date textbook that covers both Mesozoic and more modern-type Cenozoic birds in some detail. The reader is introduced to key features of basal avians and the morphological transformations that have occurred in the evolution towards modern birds. An account of the Cenozoic fossil record sheds light on the biogeographic history of the extant avian groups and discusses fossils in the context of current phylogenetic hypotheses. This review of the evolutionary history of birds not only addresses students and established researchers, but it may also be a useful source of information for anyone else with an interest in the evolution of birds and a moderate background in biology and geology.

Download or read book How Birds Evolve written by Douglas J. Futuyma and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Why are male birds often so brightly colored? Why do some birds lay more eggs than others? Will bird species adapt to climate change? In How Birds Evolve, Douglas Futuyma invites readers into the amazing world of bird evolution to answer these and other questions. Futuyma's goal in this book is not to offer a comprehensive evolutionary history of birds, but to explore how the processes of evolution produced the distinctive features and behaviors we observe in birds today as well as their impressive diversity. Using one or two birds per chapters as a lens into broader questions, Futuyma explores how a bird's evolutionary history helps us understand the diversity of species and the bird tree of life and how natural selection explains most of the characteristics of birds from how populations adapt to sexual selection and birds' amazing social behavior. Futuyma concludes by discussing the future of birds, particularly patterns of extinction and whether they can adapt to a changing climate. Ultimately, Futuyman wants readers to see that evolutionary biology helps us to better understand birds, and that the reverse is also true: studies of birds have informed almost every aspect of evolutionary biology, from Darwin to today"--

Download or read book The Evolution of Feathers written by Christian Foth and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-03-11 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feathers are one of the most unique characteristics of modern birds and represent the most complex and colourful type of skin derivate within vertebrates, while also fulfilling various biological roles, including flight, thermal insulation, display, and sensory function. For years it was generally assumed that the origin of flight was the main driving force for the evolution of feathers. However, various discoveries of dinosaur species with filamentous body coverings, made over the past 20 years, have fundamentally challenged this idea and produced new evolutionary scenarios for the origin of feathers. This book is devoted to the origin and evolution of feathers, and highlights the impact of palaeontology on this research field by reviewing a number of spectacular fossil discoveries that document the increasing morphological complexity along the evolutionary path to modern birds. Also featuring chapters on fossil feather colours, feather development and its genetic control, the book offers a timely and comprehensive overview of this popular research topic.

Download or read book Living Dinosaurs written by Dr. Gareth Dyke and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living Dinosaurs offers a snapshot of our current understanding of the origin and evolution of birds. After slumbering for more than a century, avian palaeontology has been awakened by startling new discoveries on almost every continent. Controversies about whether dinosaurs had real feathers or whether birds were related to dinosaurs have been swept away and replaced by new and more difficult questions: How old is the avian lineage? How did birds learn to fly? Which birds survived the great extinction that ended the Mesozoic Era and how did the avian genome evolve? Answers to these questions may help us understand how the different kinds of living birds are related to one another and how they evolved into their current niches. More importantly, they may help us understand what we need to do to help them survive the dramatic impacts of human activity on the planet.

Download or read book Origins of the Higher Groups of Tetrapods written by Hans-Peter Schultze and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume explores the various views on the origins of tetrapods—amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals—views that agree or differ depending in part on how certain fossil animals are classified and which methodology is used for classification. Eighteen chapters by an international group of paleontologists and neontologists here present current hypotheses, emphasizing the kinds of data needed to answer controversial questions, as well as the variety of solutions that emerge from diferent analyses of the same data set. The book is arranged in five sections, each of which contains an overview essay that either describes the development of various schools of thought regarding the origin of the tetrapod group in question or critically summarizes the arguments presented in the section. The first section addresses the origins of tetrapods as a group, focusing on lobe-finned fishes and early tetrapods. Next is a section dealing with amphbians, followed by one on reptiles. The fourth section concerns avian origins, and the final section treats the origins and early diversification of mammals. With an overall goal of stimulating critical evaluation by the reader rather than providing unequivocal answers, this volume will be of particaular interest to vertebrate paleontologists, evolutionary morphologists, and ichthyological, herpatological, avian, and mammalian systematists.

Download or read book Avian Flight written by John J. Videler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-10 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avian Flight covers all the main aspects of aerial locomotion by birds including sections on the history of thinking about bird flight, aerodynamics, functional morphology, evolution, kinematics, physiology, energetics and the cost of flight. The subject is complex and still not yet fully understood, and the author argues a convincing case for rethinking or even abandoning some of the old, well-established concepts.

Download or read book Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs written by Alan Feduccia and published by BrownWalker Press. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Birds and dinosaurs have dominated human interest for decades. In this well-supported revolutionary view of the field, critical questions are explored with credible evidence and biological thought. Are birds derived directly from advanced dinosaurs, or are they closely related dinosaur cousins? Did flight originate via the natural "gravity-assisted" trees-down model, or from the improbable “gravity-resisted” ground-up model? Were the earliest birds ground-predators or trunk-climbing gliders? Were dinosaurs hot-blooded with insulating protofeathers, or highly active, cold-blooded reptiles? These are among the questions addressed in this path-breaking book. Current consensus suggests that early birds were earth-bound and flight began on the ground. Reversing that logic, since birds are hot-blooded, by inference so too were dinosaurs, and extraordinarily complex feathers, flight brain and inner ear, evolved before flight in dinosaurs. The iconic early bird Archaeopteryx, despite innumerable flight and arboreal features, is now displayed as an earth-bound predator that could not fly. In reality, we have yet to provide satisfactory explanations for much of the biological origin and early evolution of birds. Among the questions addressed is whether truly feathered dinosaurs are in reality lost or "hidden birds?" The architectural complexity of feathers leads the author to the conclusion that if an animal has evolved extraordinarily complex, aerodynamically-designed feathers, an avian flight hand, flight membranes, and a flight brain, it's a bird. Birds and dinosaurs captivate and enchant the human imagination. These intriguing animals have dominated the field of paleontology and evolution for the past half century, engendering heated debate on avian ancestry, the origin of flight and feathers, and the biology of their fossils. Are birds living dinosaurs? In this series of entertainingly contentious and captivating essays evolutionary biologist Alan Feduccia writes with verve and humor to expose major problems in the field and advocate liberation from the shackles of consensus thinking about birds and dinosaurs. He maintains that the euphoria of paleontologists claiming to have solved the major problems of bird evolution is premature, largely generated by the adoption of a rigid, cult-like methodology, heavily blended with ideology, and excluding many biological and geological principles. He adroitly exposes and elucidates major mistakes in the field and their aftermath. Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs is a lucid revelation of clarity and synthesis, a fascinating unveiling of the underlying science that has produced the good, but also often appalling fossil research and wild speculation in bird and dinosaur evolution. A must read for anyone interested in this rapidly evolving field, the short, concise and incisive essays provide the reader with access to this complex topic. REVIEWS and WORDS OF PRAISE In this strikingly unconventional and brilliant book, Professor Alan Feduccia presents the current status of the recent controversy about the origin of birds with clarity and vigor. A thought-provoking personal exploration of what the bird fossils represent. ---Sankar Chatterjee, Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Geosciences and Curator of Paleontology, Texas Tech University. Feduccia's book eloquently reminds us that consensus science is to be shied away from especially when it is used to plead special cases against basic scientific principles. The concept of “lost birds” is particularly intriguing as it defines what birds are and how special science obfuscates the simplicity of evolution. ---David A. Burnham, Associate Researcher, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. Based on a thorough understanding of the empirical evidence, Feduccia presents a convincing account of avian origins from their putative ancestors. ---Walter J. Bock, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Columbia University and Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History. With candor, clear thinking, humor, and abundant evidence, Alan Feduccia’s Romancing the Birds and Dinosaurs should be mandatory reading for the countless millions who are intrigued by dinosaurs and their relatives, the birds. Feduccia points out the many empirical and logical shortcomings in the stubborn majority view that birds evolved from dinosaurs, an idea now solidly entrenched as dogma in education and popular culture. This new book will be as interesting to those who study human behavior and scientific methods as it will to students of vertebrate evolution. ---David W. Steadman, Curator of Ornithology, Professor of Biology, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida.

Download or read book Avian Ancestors written by Federico Agnolin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although consensus exists among researchers that birds evolved from coelurosaurian theropods, paleontologists still debate the identification of the group of coelurosaurians that most closely approaches the common ancestor of birds. The last 20 years witnessed the discovery of a wide array of avian-like theropods that has considerably amplified the anatomical disparity among deinonychosaurians, some of which resemble Archaeopteryx more than Deinonychus. Among these newly discovered theropods that show remarkable bird-like characteristics are the four-winged theropods Microraptor and Anchiornis, and the unenlagiids Unenlagia, Buitreraptor, and Rahonavis. A bizarre group of minute-sized coelurosaurs, the Scansoriopterygidae, also exhibits some avian similarities that lead some authors to interpret them as more closely related to birds than other dinosaurs. With the aim to explore the phylogenetic relationships of these coelurosaurians and birds, we merged recently published integrative databases, resulting in significant changes in the topological distribution of taxa within Paraves. We present evidence that Dromaeosauridae, Microraptoria, Unenlagiidae, and Anchiornis + Xiaotingia form successive sister taxa of Aves, and that the Scansoriopterygidae are basal coelurosaurians not closely related to birds. The implications in the evolutionary sequence of anatomical characters leading to birds, including the origin of flight, are also considered in light of this new phylogenetic hypothesis.

Download or read book The Mistaken Extinction written by Lowell Dingus and published by W H Freeman & Company. This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, science has been searching for clues to the disappearance of the dinosaurs without answering a critical question - Are all the dinosaurs really extinct? In The Mistaken Extinction: Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds, crackerjack paleontologists Lowell Dingus, President of Infoquest, a nonprofit education and research foundation, and former Director of the Fossil Hall Renovation at the American Museum of Natural History and Timothy Rowe, J. Nalle Gregory Regents Professor of Geology at the University of Texas, Austin, and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Texas Memorial Museum lead us on an adventurous tour through the history of our own planet Earth. And they force us to face a shocking truthThe answer to that critical question is no.