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Nothing quite says 'look at me!' like an extravagant set of tail feathers. Plenty of modern birds sacrifice agility for a chance to grab attention, but examples among relatives in the fossil record have been harder to come by. Scientists have now described the remains of a 120-million-year-old feathered dinosaur roughly the size of a bluejay, with an extremely long and extravagant behind. The remarkably-detailed fossil was found in northeastern China and named Yuanchuavis (Yuanchuavis kompsosoura) after a phoenix-like bird in Chinese mythology. It's the first time a bird-like fossil from the Mesozoic era has been discovered with such a...

BERLIN - Chancellor Angela Merkel has received former U.S. President Barack Obama at her office in Berlin for a meeting characterized by German officials as a routine private encounter with a former international peer...

The brilliant object sits on display in a Viennese museum—and Mexico’s been wanting it back for decades.IN 1878, THE AUSTRIAN GEOLOGIST and explorer Ferdinand von Hochstetter went prospecting in the hills above Innsbruck. He wasn’t looking for gold or minerals. Rather, he needed exhibits for a newly founded Museum of Natural History in Vienna, of which he had just been named the director. He found what he was looking for in a dusty drawer of the Renaissance-built Ambras Castle—a magnificent piece of feather work, tucked away in a case together with assorted objects from North America, China, and the Sunda...

March 15: National Tar and Feather Day

With only a few "household items" you can make a torch that's relatively safe* that can last for up to an hour. step 1 supplies For this project you will need an piece of 100% cotton cloth* (I used an old under shirt) a sturdy stick or a scrap piece of wood a stapler a hammer and tiki � torch oil or kerosene *Has to be 100% cotton (or Kevlar ) please don't use any material that melts when burned step 2 wrapping the torch the first thing you want to do is get a rag that's about twelve inches...

Birds, more than any other group of animals, are a celebration of color. They have evolved to every extreme of the spectrum, from the hot pink of flamingos to the shimmering blue of a peacock’s neck. Yet, for decades, paleontologists who study extinct birds have had to use their imaginations to see the colors in the fossils. Several feather fossils have been unearthed over the years, but they have always been assumed to be colorless vestiges. Now a team of scientists has discovered color-producing molecules that have survived for 47 million years in the fossil of a feather. By analyzing...

Missing link feather fossils found in France By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 20/02/2008 Primitive feathers that represent a key missing link in their evolution have been found, fossilised in 100-million-year-old amber from France. The fossils mark a step towards the shape of modern feathers As long as scientists have studied birds, they have puzzled over that most intricate of avian features - the feather. Because it is a marvellous feat of biological engineering, it has been siezed on by creationists trying to find evidence of designs that lie beyond the abilities of evolution. Scientists themselves have...

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TOKYO (AFP) - An underwear maker celebrated the birth of Japan's first new professional baseball team in 50 years with a commemorative bra shaped like baseballs each bearing the team mascots. The bra is made of synthetic leather and has dolls of the team's furry mascots "Clutch" and female "Clucchina" clutching the side of each bra cup turned baseball. Completing the theme, the bra is trimmed with a real eagle's feather, underwear maker Triumph said. The single commemorative bra will be sold by an internet auction closing Wednesday, a day ahead of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles' home debut in...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

<p>Tiffany globe paperweight belonged to victim Gregory Milanowycz, 25, said his mom, Adele.</p> <p>March 21, 2004 -- EVERYBODY does it. That's the response Jane Turner got when she told federal investigators that a fellow FBI agent had stolen a Tiffany globe found at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.</p>

From Iraq to Libya, US knew little on weapons Doubts that Hussein had WMD raise questions about war's rationale and intelligence reliability. By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – When it comes to unconventional weapons, Iraq may have been far from the most dangerous country in the world after all. In recent days a string of surprising revelations has scrambled the world's proliferation threat assessments. Iraq's weapons programs were apparently in shambles, for instance, while Libya's were surprisingly advanced. Pakistan's nuclear scientists might have been rogue agents, proffering secrets for cash. And it appears...

Scientist Says Ostrich Study Confirms Bird "Hands" Unlike Those Of Dinosaurs CHAPEL HILL -- To make an omelet, you need to break some eggs. Not nearly so well known is that breaking eggs also can lead to new information about the evolution of birds and dinosaurs, a topic of hot debate among leading biologists. Drs. Alan Feduccia and Julie Nowicki of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have done just that. They opened a series of live ostrich eggs at various stages of development and found what they believe is proof that birds could not have descended...