* Astronomy

Old fossils solve mystery of earliest bird extinction

Most early bird species suffered from the same catastrophic extinction as the dinosaurs, new research has shown.
The meteorite impact that coincided with the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, also saw a rapid decline in primitive bird species.
Only a few bird groups survived through the mass extinction, from which all modern birds are descended.
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Dinosaur feathers found in Alberta amber

Feathers believed to be from dinosaurs have been found beautifully preserved in Alberta amber.
The primitive, hair-like feathers known as protofeathers likely belonged to theropods - dinosaurs similar to tiny Tyrannosaurus rexes - that roamed the swampy forests of Alberta 80 million years ago
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A chicken-sized dinosaur fossil found in China may have overturned a long-held theory about the origin of birds.
For 150 years, a species called Archaeopteryx has been regarded as the first true bird, representing a major evolutionary step away from dinosaurs.
But the new fossil suggests this creature was just another feathery dinosaur and not the significant link that palaeontologists had believed.
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Evolution of the sense of smell in dinosaurs and birds

Everyone knows birds aren't exactly bloodhounds. The party line has been that the evolution of flight in birds favoured vision and balance over olfaction, and so the sense of smell was reduced. A new study overturns that perception, showing that as birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs their sense of smell was maintained and actually increased in basal birds. The olfactory bulbs of the brain, where information on odours is processed, were measured in 157 species of non-avian dinosaurs, fossil birds, and modern-day birds. For many of the fossil species, CT scanning provided the first-ever glimpse into brain and olfactory bulb structure. Rather than diminishing, the olfactory bulbs of the earliest birds were still basically dinosaur-sized, and even increased in relative size among early birds, including in the earliest members of the radiation of modern-day (neornithine) birds. As a result, the sense of smell remained very important to early birds, even as they were simultaneously honing other parts of their "flight computer," and early birds may have used odours to a much greater extent in navigation and foraging than do most birds today. Another key finding is the unexpected importance of smell for non-avian theropods. Many dinosaur species that we usually regard as having used mostly vision, such as Velociraptor, Bambiraptor and Troodon, almost certainly also relied on smell.
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