Body coverings such as hair and feathers have played a central role in evolution. They enabled warm-bloodedness by insulating ...

And as far as we know, blue feathers have been fairly uncommon through time: Of the 61 lineages of living birds, only 10 have species with E. brachyptera’s most probable coloration.

A delicate, innocuous little fossil reptile known as Mirasaura grauvogeli – “Grauvogel’s wonder reptile” – is forcing a ...

Among the more than 300 hummingbird species dazzling the skies of the Americas, some stand out with exceptional elegance and ...

Biologists have long thought feathers first evolved so that creatures like birds could better regulate their body temperature, but UCC research on a fossil reptile suggests a different explanation.

For the last 30 years only two ways of making a non-iridescent blue feathers were known, both which depend on holes in a spongy-like matrix of a protein called beta-keratin.

It’s all about the pockets within the feather that absorb all the colors of light, except for blue. If you light a blue jay's feather from the back you can see there's no actual blue in the feather.

Like 90 percent of the blue coloration in nature, Hsiung says, the tarantula hair comes to its blueness from light reflected through embedded nanoscale structures. And, oh the variety.