Their version of racing birds is rather different from others, with the last pigeon to return to the coop being declared the winner, not the first.
In its song, the new bird is rather similar to other Asian species, producing whistles, chirps and trills, but is slightly more high-pitched and lacks the lower-pitched notes that other species make.
Only a couple of other localities worldwide are from the Mesozoic and both are primarily marine rather than terrestrial, so in fact animals such as dinosaurs, birds and mammals are rather rare in these fossil beds.
In addition, many enantiornithines retain teeth in their mandible and claws on their forelimbs, features that are omnipresent in dinosaurs but were subsequently lost on the evolutionary path towards modern birds (although hand claws are rather selectively lost, since many living birds still have hand claws).
Dr. Van Buskirk's work took place in the eastern United States, and he found just the opposite trend: eastern birds are shrinking rather than growing.
However, circulating levels of testosterone in unmanipulated birds are labile rather than constant, so implant studies cannot provide a complete picture regarding the potential for evolutionary response to selection on hormone-mediated phenotypes.
The 15 species of becards (comprising the genera Platypsaris and Pachyramphus) are rather plain, small birds with thick bills hooked at the tip.
It should be noted that the current results may be biased toward urban environments, where dead birds were more likely found, and because the sampling efforts for the bird mortality were rather based on local residents' reports than a designed random sampling method.
The bird genome is rather conserved: periods of gene loss were followed by low levels of gene change, but birds have gained many non-coding genes with regulatory function, which helps to explain bird diversity, he says.
I could always ask them what bird it was rather than look it up in the guide.
