In a nutshell Scientists temporarily reversed feather evolution in chickens by blocking a key developmental pathway, causing ...

Feathers are among the most complex cutaneous appendages in the animal kingdom. While their evolutionary origin has been ...

Feathers may have started as simple filaments in ancient dinosaurs, but a team of Swiss researchers is digging deep into the ...

From a central feather shaft extends a series of slender barbs, each sprouting smaller barbules, like branches from a bough, lined with tiny hooks. When these grasp on to the hooklets of ...

Ornithologists at the Natural History Museum and UCLA are studying how smoke from the January wildfires will affect the region’s birds. It’s part of a broader scientific effort to understand the ...

Scientists recreate ancient proto-feathers in chicken embryos, revealing evolutionary resilience in feather development.

Scientists now believe that feathers didn’t just appear suddenly in birds. Instead, they evolved step by step from much ...

At the 12th day of incubation, feather buds exhibit longitudinal domains of cell density that correspond to the barbs of the future down feather. Feathers are among the most complex cutaneous ...

Proto-feathers are simple, cylindrical filaments. They differ from modern feathers by the absence of barbs and barbules, and by the lack of a follicle -- an invagination at their base. The ...