New fossil shows Archaeopteryx sported 'feathered trousers'

The origin of feathers and the origin of flight have been a contentious chicken-and-egg issue in the scientific world for decades. Did feathers develop as a flight mechanism - or were they first used for other purposes?

Researchers build robotic bat wing (w/ video)

The strong, flapping flight of bats offers great possibilities for the design of small aircraft, among other applications. By building a robotic bat wing, Brown researchers have uncovered flight secrets of real bats: the ...

Early birds had an old-school version of wings

In comparison to modern birds, the prehistoric Archaeopteryx and bird-like dinosaurs before them had a more primitive version of a wing. The findings, reported on November 21 in Current Biology, lend support to the notion ...

Bats save energy by drawing in wings on upstroke: study

(Phys.org) -- Bat wings are like hands: meaty, bony and full of joints. A new Brown University study finds that bats take advantage of their flexibility by folding in their wings on the upstroke to save inertial energy. The ...