A polished piece of amber from Myanmar has revealed one of the most significant fossil discoveries in recent years– an ...

Unlike modern feathers, proto-feathers were unbranched, cylindrical filaments. They lacked the intricate barbs and barbules that give feathers their structure today, as well as the follicle, the small ...

They differ from modern feathers by the absence of barbs and barbules, and by the lack of a follicle -- an invagination at their base. The emergence of proto-feathers likely marked the first key ...

FEATHERS HAVE LONG walked the fine line between opulence and excess, but in 2025, they’re landing somewhere far more refined. No longer reserved for cabaret stages or costume parties, they’re ...

The nanostructures in feathers are located in the barbules—tiny filaments that are too small to see with the naked eye, which project from the barbs, the horizontal strands that attach to the ...

An illustration of a magnifying glass. An illustration of a magnifying glass.

The feather is up in a tree along the edge. Go to the area labeled “2” on the map, and you’ll find the feather up on an AC unit. Go to the area labeled “3” on the map, and you’ll see ...

In many feathers, such as those that form the shape of the wings and tail, the barbs are then further subdivided into twigs, so to speak, called barbules. On flight feathers, the barbs all grow in the ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used high-resolution microscopes and 3D technology to capture an unprecedented view of feathers from the ...

Generally, bird feathers have a central shaft with smaller barbs coming off it and even smaller barbules coming off those. But in dry sandgrouse feathers, the inner zone of the feather has ...

“In the inner zone, the barb shafts are large and stiff enough to provide a rigid base about which the other parts of the feather deform, and the barbules are small and flexible enough that ...