Earth’s ancient past was a time when creatures of unimaginable size ruled land, sea, and sky. While today’s elephants, whales, and crocodiles might seem enormous, they’re practically dwarfed by their prehistoric counterparts. These massive beasts lived in a world where being bigger often meant surviving longer, hunting more effectively, or defending against equally enormous predators. ...
In a Cretaceous forest now frozen into stone, a small predator wore feathers like a secret. Fossils from northeastern China show Microraptor with flight-quality feathers not just on its arms, but also on its legs – a four-winged blueprint that looks both ingenious and improbable. For decades, the mystery has simmered: was this animal a ...
Every rule of flight has an exception, and nature seems to collect them like trophies. For more than a century, scientists have puzzled over animals that look ill-suited for the sky, only to find they rode the wind with ease. Today, new imaging, biomechanics, and aerodynamics are rewriting what we thought was possible, revealing clever ...
