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The Berlin Archaeopteryx, one of the earliest known birds. Around 350 BCE, Aristotle and other philosophers of the time attempted to explain the aerodynamics of avian flight . Even after the discovery of the ancestral bird Archaeopteryx which lived over 150 million years ago, debates still persist regarding the evolution of flight.
The basal bird Archaeopteryx, from the Jurassic, is well known as one of the first "missing links" to be found in support of evolution in the late 19th century. Though it is not considered a direct ancestor of modern birds, it gives a fair representation of how flight evolved and how the very first bird might have looked.
Earliest published illustration of the species (a male), Mark Catesby, 1731 Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus coined the binomial name Columba macroura for both the mourning dove and the passenger pigeon in the 1758 edition of his work Systema Naturae (the starting point of biological nomenclature), wherein he appears to have considered the two identical.
However, some creatures can stay in the same spot, known as hovering, either by rapidly flapping the wings, as do hummingbirds, hoverflies, dragonflies, and some others, or carefully using thermals, as do some birds of prey. The slowest flying non-hovering bird recorded is the American woodcock, at 8 kilometres per hour (5.0 mph). [26]
Archaeopteryx was the first and for a long time the only known feathered Mesozoic animal. As a result, discussion of the evolution of birds and of bird flight centered on Archaeopteryx at least until the mid-1990s. The supracoracoideus works using a pulley-like system to lift the wing while the pectorals provide the powerful downstroke.
Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species ...
Birds are typically observed to fly in V-shaped formations or J-shaped formations, the latter commonly known as echelon. The first study to attempt to quantify the energy saving of a large flock of birds was Lissaman & Schollenberger [6] who provided the first, albeit notably flawed, [1] estimate for a 25-member flock of birds. A most ...
Eurasian cranes in a V formation (video) Birds flying in V formation. A V formation is a symmetric V- or chevron-shaped flight formation.In nature, it occurs among geese, swans, ducks, and other migratory birds, improving their energy efficiency, while in human aviation, it is used mostly in military aviation, air shows, and occasionally commercial aviation.