"Anchiornis" had large wings, made up of flight feathers attached to the arm and hand (as in modern birds) as well as flight feathers on the hind legs, forming an arrangement of fore and hind wings. The forewing of "Anchiornis" was composed of 11 primary feathers and 10 secondary feathers. The primary feathers in "Anchiornis" indicated poorer aerodynamic ability compared to its later relatives. In "Microraptor" and "Archaeopteryx", the longest forewing feathers were closest to the tip of the wing, making the wings appear long, narrow, and pointed. However, in "Anchiornis", the longest wing feathers anchored near the wrist, making the wing broadest in the middle and tapering near the tip for a more rounded, less flight-adapted profile.
So the animal could glide, but probably not fly.
Flying gave the birds access to many new habitats, and an adaptive radiation took place. We see the results of this rapid evolution in the Chinese fossils from the Lower Cretaceous, which are more varied, and mostly more advanced, than "Archaeopteryx". There are now 31 different bird genera from the Lower Cretaceous of China. It is also clear, from the tail feathers of "Confuciusornis" (one of the Chinese fossils), that some of these birds were already using feathers for signalling and display, just as they do today. Like heat regulation, using feathers for display may be much earlier than flight. "Confuciusornis" is the fifth oldest bird fossil, about 25 million years after "Archaeopteryx".
Most dinosaurs died out in the K/T extinction event, at the end of the Cretaceous. The only ones that survived were the birds. The birds, therefore, are not just the descendents of reptiles, but the descendents of theropod dinosaurs. Birds are the last surviving dinosaurs.
The pigments preserved in a 120 million year old fossil bird have been revealed using X-rays. A team scanned the beautifully preserved fossils of "Gansus yumenensis" and "Confuciusornis sanctus". Their study, published in the journal "Science", revealed the chemical fingerprint of pigments that once tinted the ancient bird's feathers. The trace metal copper is a marker for the dark pigment eumelanin. "The X-ray technique was so sensitive that it was able to show that each molecule of copper it detected was being tugged and squashed into a particular shape because it was bound within a eumelanin molecule".
Research of this kind has now been repeated several times.
This is an informal grouping of theropods closest related to birds. These groups are small dinosaurs. They definitely have pennaceous feathers (like birds), and therefore probably temperature regulation. One proposed classification is:
The earliest example of a dinobird is a troodont, "Anchiornis huxlei", from the Upper Jurassic. This specimen pre-dates "Archaeopteryx" by 5–10 million years, and predates any other feathered dinosaur from its location (Liaoning Province, China) by 25–35 million years. This species had long feathers on its hind limbs as well as fore limbs, and could glide, but probably not fly.
At least this clade of theropods had well-developed genuine feathers before the first known bird. Feathering in other groups of theropods is still uncertain. One compsognathid, "Sinosauropteryx", has plumaceous feathers, as does "Shuvuuia", another small theropod. Apparently, many small theropods carried feathers, whose function was thermoregulation (to keep warm).
There is now evidence that many early bird groups went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period (K/T extinction event). This is the same time that the other dinosaurs went extinct.
Researchers dated the fossils to within 300,000 years of the boundary layer at the end of the Cretaceous.
A May 2018 report, in "Current Biology", says that its authors think that the birds that survived the end-of-Cretaceous disaster were Neornithes, Neognathae (Galloanserae + Neoaves). They were not tree-living, and could not fly far. After the world-wide destruction of forests, it took a long time for the world's forests to return properly. Virtually the same conclusions were already reached before, in a 2017 book on avian evolution.
All living birds are Neornithes, a subclass in traditional taxonomy. The Ornithurae is the natural group made up of modern birds and their extinct relatives. Their relatives include "Ichthyornis" and "Hesperornis", and some of the Chinese Cretaceous birds. They all have a plough-shaped pygostyle, a bone at the end of the tail which allows the tail feathers to fan and retract. Other groups of birds became extinct in the K/T extinction event.
"Gansus" is a genus of aquatic birds that lived during the Lower Cretaceous, somewhere between 115 to 105 million years ago in what is now Gansu province, western China. It may be the oldest-known of the Ornithurae, depending how that group is defined.
Under any definition, all living birds, including taxa as diverse as ostriches, hummingbirds and eagles, are descended from basal ornithurans, many of which were semi-aquatic. It is now thought possible that all modern birds descended specifically from a semi-aquatic bird similar to "Gansus". Thus, while "Gansus" is not necessarily a direct ancestor of today's birds, it is closely related to such an ancestral species.
Reddit
Reddit is a website where people share links to articles, media and other things on the web. The website is organized into "subreddits", communities within the Reddit community to discuss certain topics or to look at specific content. The posted links can be voted on, and the links with most votes are displayed on the front page of the website. Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and is also available in other languages. People in the Reddit community call themselves "redditors". Some examples of subreddits are /r/Pics, /r/Aww, /r/FakeHistory, /r/WritingPrompts, /r/Showerthoughts, /r/todayilearned. Subreddits are directed towards all sort of things, like educational, funny, cute pictures of animals, intellectual nonsense, internet memes, and more.
Reddit has occasionally been the topic of controversy due to the presence of subreddits devoted to explicit or controversial material, including subreddits r/Creepshots and r/jailbait.
Reddit is a website comprising user-generated content that can be discussed like a forum.
Reddit's core content consists of posts from its users.
Reddit users are called "redditors."
Moderators are called "mods".
Discussions on Reddit are organized into user-created areas of interest called "subreddits".
Bryde's whale
Bryde's whale is a baleen whale. It is a small group of several species which look alike and used to be lumped together. The whale can grow from 12.5 m (41 ft) to 14 m (46 ft) long and a weight of 16–18.5 tonnes, with the female larger than the male.
Until the 1950s it was considered a single species, Balaenoptera brydei. It is now known that there are several almost identical species. Balaenoptera edeni and Balaenoptera omurai are two other species in the group.
There has also been confusion between the Sei whale, Balaenoptera borealis, and the Bryde's whale as they look alike and are the same size. Bryde's whale is unique in having three long ridges on its head that go from between the eyes towards the blowhole. All other rorquals have just one. The Bryde's whales skin varies from black to dark grey.
The whale was named after Johan Bryde, who built South Africa's first factory to process whales. They are found in tropical and sub-tropical waters. There seem to be several different types of Bryde's whales, but it has not yet been decided if they are different species, or a sub-species. In particular, "B. brydei" and "B. edeni" may be sister species.
Catherine of Portugal
Catherine of Portugal (born in Lisbon, Portugal November 26, 1436; died June 17, 1463), also known as the Infanta Catarina, was the daughter of King Edward of Portugal. She lived most of her life and died in the Convent of Saint Claire.