While rare, a few birds we studied were rule-breakers. One such rule-breaker is the Eurasian spoonbill, whose highly specialised beak shape helps it sift through the mud to capture aquatic life.

a 60-pound dinosaur from the beginning of the theropod family tree with a smooth skull (“basically a triangle with teeth,” Gates says). The researchers found that 20 of the 22 biggest ...

Still, many known theropods had big legs, short arms, and stout, long tails—hardly the anatomy one would expect on a creature leaping from trees. Other paleontologists argued that birds did not ...

It was possibly due to a move by some small theropods into trees in search of either food or protection. During the course of their evolutionary history, the body size of some theropod groups ...

Live reconstruction of a Bonapartenykus specimen by Abel G. Montes. (Image Credit: Meso et al. 2025, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 ...

Despite the increasingly clear picture of the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs that has emerged, a few scientists are still unconvinced. No alternative hypothesis has been offered to ...

Two representative theropod tracks from the Koum Basin in Cameroon. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing ...

Figure 1. Life reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous Iren Dabasu Formation fauna, showing theropod dinosaurs of various diets. Such dietary niche partitioning could have contributed to the ...

we may expect to find it hiding in many other forms across the tree of life. More information: Kathleen L.S. Garland et al, Common developmental origins of beak shapes and evolution in theropods ...