One of nature's most efficient life-support systems is the egg. Eggs evolved over 300 million years ago as vertebrate animals adapted to living on land. And since then, they've taken on numerous ...

The mystery of why birds’ eggs come in so many shapes has long been up in the air. Now new research suggests adaptations for flight may have helped shape the orbs. Stronger fliers tend to lay more ...

Mary Caswell Stoddard, an assistant professor in Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, proposes a far-ranging hypothesis regarding how and why bird eggs acquire their shapes. Her ...

The evolution of the amniotic egg -- complete with membrane and shell -- was key to vertebrates leaving the oceans and colonizing the land and air but how bird eggs evolved into so many different ...

The eggs laid by birds come in an astonishing variety of shapes: ellipses in hummingbirds, spheres in owls, pointy ovoids in shorebirds and almost everything in between. Avian egg shape has fascinated ...

Scientists may have just cracked the mystery of why bird eggs come in all shapes and sizes: it has to do with the bird’s ability to soar up in the sky — and the body changes wrought by years of ...

Why do sea turtles, softshell turtles and snappers lay round eggs whereas pond sliders and many other turtles have elliptical eggs shaped more like those of a chicken? This question came up recently ...