Why Birds Outlived the Other Dinosaurs

History · Published

Why Birds Outlived the Other Dinosaurs · 1:58 · Intellect Plus

In short: About 66 million years ago the K-Pg extinction ended the non-avian dinosaurs and most bird groups. Only the Neornithes came through, and scientists still weigh competing explanations: seed-eating beaks, life on the ground after forest collapse, and feathers.

A 1:58 short film in the series “Why Did…?”, narrated by intellect_voice_01.

Sources used in this film: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science); review article by Schulte et al., “The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary”; Purdue University (Purdue University News), “Dinosaur-killing asteroid also created a dust cloud that insulated Earth, ‘charbroiling’ Cretaceous creatures”; Nature Communications (Springer Nature), “Biogenic carbonate mercury and marine temperature records reveal global influence of Late Cretaceous Deccan Traps - Nature Communications”; Natural History Museum, London, “What killed the dinosaurs? | Natural History Museum”; Smithsonian Magazine (Smithsonian Institution), “What Happened the Day a Giant, Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Hit the Earth”; Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science); Schoene et al., “U-Pb geochronology of the Deccan Traps and relation to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction”; Nature Communications (Springer Nature), “End-Cretaceous extinction in Antarctica linked to both Deccan volcanism and meteorite impact via climate change - Nature Communications”; ScienceDaily, “Fossil teeth suggest that seeds saved bird ancestors from extinction”; BBC News, “Seed clue to how birds survived mass extinction”; University of Bath (Milner Centre for Evolution), “Modern tree-dwelling birds evolved from the ground up”; Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), Cornell University, “Asteroid impact grounded bird ancestors”; University of Cambridge, “'Wonderchicken' fossil from the age of dinosaurs reveals origin of modern birds”; PubMed Central (US National Library of Medicine), hosting a peer-reviewed research article on the enantiornithine bird Mirarce eatoni, “The most complete enantiornithine from North America and a phylogenetic analysis of the Avisauridae”; PubMed Central (US National Library of Medicine, NCBI): research article 'Mass extinction of birds at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary', “Mass extinction of birds at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary”; University of Washington (UW News), adapted from a Field Museum release; reports a peer-reviewed paper by O'Connor et al. in Current Biology, “Fossil feathers preserved inside dinosaur poop could help explain why some birds survived the dinosaur mass extinction | UW News”; ScienceDaily (reporting a study in Current biology led by the Field Museum, Chicago), “66-million-year-old feather in dinosaur poop may reveal why birds survived the asteroid”; Natural History Museum, London, “How dinosaurs evolved into birds | Natural History Museum”; Smithsonian Magazine (Smithsonian Institution), article by Riley Black, Science Correspondent, September 15, 2020, “Why Birds Survived, and Dinosaurs Went Extinct, After an Asteroid Hit Earth”.

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