Millions of mummified ibis and birds of prey, sacrificed to the Egyptian gods Horus, Ra or Thoth, have been discovered in the necropolises of the Nile Valley. Such a quantity of mummified birds raises the question of their origin: were they bred, like cats, or were they hunted? According to a team of scientists that […]
Confuciusornis was a crow-like fossil bird that lived in the Cretaceous ~120 million years ago. It was one of the first birds to evolve a beak. Early beak evolution remains understudied. Using an imaging technique called Laser-Stimulated Fluorescence, researchers address this by revealing just how different the beak and jaw of Confuciusornis were compared to […]
Researchers use mathematical modeling to explore how species diversity in a bacterial community is affected when the nutrients the microbes depend upon are only seasonally available.
