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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.
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]
Charles Gald Sibley (August 7, 1917 – April 12, 1998) was an American ornithologist and molecular biologist.He had an immense influence on the scientific classification of birds, and the work that Sibley initiated has substantially altered our understanding of the evolutionary history of modern birds.
Many species migrate annually over great distances and across oceans; several families of birds have adapted to life both on the world's oceans and in them, and some seabird species come ashore only to breed, [68] while some penguins have been recorded diving up to 300 metres (980 ft) deep.
1933 – Nagamichi Kuroda publishes Birds of the Island of Java (2 Volumes, 1933–36). 1934 – Roger Tory Peterson publishes his Guide to the Birds, the first modern field guide. 1934–37 – Brian Roberts is the expedition ornithologist on John Rymill's British Graham Land Expedition (BGLE).
The evolutionary origin of birds was an open question in paleontology for over a century, but the modern scientific consensus is that birds evolved from small feathered theropods in the Jurassic. Not all dinosaur lineages were cut short at the end of the Cretaceous during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event , and over 11,000 species of ...
Birds are popular characters in children's books, which are often handsomely illustrated. Beatrix Potter's 1908 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck created an enduringly popular bird heroine. [124] Other authors followed with many bird characters in books for children of different ages. [125]
The Origin of Birds is an early synopsis of bird evolution written in 1926 by Gerhard Heilmann, a Danish artist and amateur zoologist.The book was born from a series of articles published between 1913 and 1916 in Danish, and although republished as a book it received mainly criticism from established scientists and got little attention within Denmark.