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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...

Dinosaur-Era Bird Could Fly, Brain Study Says John Pickrell in England for National Geographic News August 4, 2004 The earliest known bird was discovered in a Bavarian quarry in 1861. Ever since, scientists have disagreed as to whether Archaeopteryx was fully capable of flight. Exquisitely preserved fossils reveal that the winged, feathered animal had numerous modern birdlike features, but much of its primitive reptilian skeleton betrays a close kinship to meat-eating dinosaurs. Now a study into the shape of Archaeopteryx's brain says that the animal already possessed many of the prerequisites for flight, such as great vision and a good...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two strange new species of worms, without eyes or stomachs or even mouths, have been discovered living on the bones of dead whales in California's Monterey Bay. "Who knows what we can learn here," researcher Robert Vrijenhoek said. "There are many things left to discover in this world. Some we find by accident ... and some we find because we look in places that few people have explored before, as in much of our work in the deep oceans." In this case, it was a bit of both because the unexpected discovery was made about 9,400 feet...