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The basal bird Archaeopteryx, from the Jurassic, is well known as one of the first "missing links" to be found in support of evolution in the late 19th century. Though it is not considered a direct ancestor of modern birds, it gives a fair representation of how flight evolved and how the very first bird might have looked.
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]
Gastornis, a large flightless bird, appears in the fossil record. 55 Ma Modern bird groups diversify (first song birds, parrots, loons, swifts, woodpeckers), first whale (Himalayacetus), earliest lagomorphs, armadillos, appearance of sirenian, proboscidean mammals in the fossil record. Flowering plants continue to diversify.
The oldest fossil evidence for paravians — the dinosaur group that includes the earliest birds and their closest relatives — appears around the middle of the Jurassic Period (201.3 million to ...
c. 62 Ma – Fall in sea level and the retreat of inland seas completes the emergence of North America; First penguins appear – Genus Crossvallia, the earliest known birds suited to an aquatic lifestyle, alongside Kupoupou appear in the fossil record of Antarctica (from the Cross Valley Formation on Seymour Island) and New Zealand (Takatika ...
Archaeopteryx (/ ˌ ɑːr k iː ˈ ɒ p t ər ɪ k s /; lit. ' old-wing '), sometimes referred to by its German name, "Urvogel" (lit. Primeval Bird) is a genus of bird-like dinosaurs.The name derives from the ancient Greek ἀρχαῖος (archaīos), meaning "ancient", and πτέρυξ (ptéryx), meaning "feather" or "wing".
"When dinosaurs first appear in the fossil record, all the Earth's continents were part of the giant supercontinent Pangaea. Dinosaurs emerged in the southern portion of this landmass, known as ...
The history of paleontology traces the history of the effort to understand the history of life on Earth by studying the fossil record left behind by living organisms. Since it is concerned with understanding living organisms of the past, paleontology can be considered to be a field of biology, but its historical development has been closely tied to geology and the effort to understand the ...