Quick Take Vulturine guinea fowl’s blue and white plumage comes from feather structure, not pigments, creating vivid, long-distance visual signals. Bright colors and high-contrast patterns help ...

Some patterns arise simply or randomly, but others develop via complex, precise interactions of pattern-generating systems. Their beauty aside, the intricacies of these systems are inspiring the ...

Birds show an amazing diversity in plumage color and patterning. But what are the genetic mechanisms creating such patterns? Researchers now report that two independent mutations are required to ...

Just days after one group of researchers reported that some dinosaurs had russet-colored feathers, another set of scientists says their ancient fossil appears to have had stripes and a Mohawk-style ...

Scientists studying ancient fossils of a small feathered dinosaur have discovered that it had a bandit’s mask as well as a striped tail, rather like today’s raccoons. The eye-catching plumage of ...