Wang (lead author)

Stories

Earliest known flightless bird lived alongside flying Jurassic species

Researcher on the Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis study

A crow-sized bird that lived 150 million years ago in southeastern China never flew. Its fossil, described October 14 in the journal Nature, is the earliest known flightless bird and shows flightlessness appeared almost as soon as birds did.

Updated Oct 14

Antarctica's record ice gain traced to tropical ocean warming

New Capabilities

Lead researcher of the team explaining the 2021-2023 anomaly

Between July 2021 and April 2023, East Antarctica gained roughly 695 billion tons of ice, the largest 22-month mass gain in two decades. The gain briefly paused a decline that had been losing about 140 billion tons per year since 2003.

Updated Sep 8

Notable Quotes

Yuezhuornis challenges the traditional paradigm that the avian body plan evolved almost exclusively under the selective pressures of flight.

from Earliest known flightless bird lived alongside flying Jurassic species · Updated Oct 14

The morphological gap between birds and dinosaurs is much smaller than we thought.

from Earliest known flightless bird lived alongside flying Jurassic species · Updated Oct 14