birds

New research led by the American Museum of Natural History provides evidence that dinosaurs evolved the brainpower necessary for flight well before they actually took to the air as birds.

Philososeagull always asks the tough questions.

Scientists have long suspected that corvids -- the family of birds including ravens, crows and magpies -- are highly intelligent. Now, Tübingen neurobiologists Lena Veit und Professor Andreas Nieder have demonstrated how the brains of crows produce intelligent behavior when the birds have to make strategic decisions.

Their results are published in the latest edition of Nature Communications. Crows are no bird-brains. Behavioral biologists have even called them "feathered primates" because the birds make and use tools, are able to remember large numbers of feeding sites, and plan their social behavior according to what other members of their group do.

Archaeologists have unearthed the fossil of a "four-winged" dinosaur bird – indicating that feathered dinosaurs may have been able to fly before the evolution of birds.

The long tail feathers of Changyuraptor, from north-east China, would have provided the stability and speed control required for a safe landing.

At four feet long and weighing 90 pounds, the creature, which lived 125 million years ago, is the biggest dinosaur of its type yet discovered.

The well-preserved fossil shows that its body was cloaked by a full set of feathers and, in comparison with its body size, the foot-long tail feathers were unusually long.