yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Are Birds Modern-Day Dinosaurs? | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

When an asteroid slammed into Earth 66 million years ago, only about 20% of all animal species survived. So, whatever happened to these lucky few? Birds come from a long line of survivors. It started millions of years before the asteroid strike with a dinosaur family called theropods.

The theropod family featured reptilian specimens, some of which had bird-like traits, including feathers and 3-toed feet. A distant cousin of theropods in today's birds was the Archaeopteryx. Fossils from Germany date the animal to about 150 million years ago, and they show how the animal may have even had both reptilian and avian traits. Many ancient birds would also exhibit this mishmash of traits, but eventually, some of these avian dinosaurs evolved to have more recognizably bird-like characteristics.

One example is the sparrow-sized sonorous sentences discovered in China around 1990. The archaic creature is considered one of the first birds capable of flight. In 1992, a new specimen was discovered in Antarctica called Vegavis iaai. The 67 million year-old creature may have looked like a duck and sounded like one. The fossil included a vocal organ called a syrinx, which is only found in today's quacking waterfowl.

About a million years after the time of the asteroid's strike, Earth redirected the evolutionary paths of many animals, including birds. Three bird groups of the theropod family managed to make it through such a cataclysmic event, and scientists are still uncertain as to how. Ever since, birds have been able to adapt and evolve, eventually blooming into the over 10,000 species alive today.

So, the next time you're looking out at your bird feeder, remember that you're looking at the modern-day dinosaurs. [Music]

More Articles

View All
Reasoning about factors and multiples
We’re told we know that 5 times 3 is equal to 15. Yep, that’s true. So which of the following statements are also true? It says to choose two answers. So pause this video and see if you can work through that. All right, now let’s go through them one by o…
Templating a contract with variables | Intro to CS - Python | Khan Academy
Let’s work together on a program that uses variables and user input. Here’s the problem I’m trying to solve: my friend Deshawn has a catering business, and for each catering job that he takes, he needs to write up a contract between him and the client. Ev…
How to sell a $14M private jet.
What kind of a budget is your client looking to be in? What’s the maximum range you’re trying to reach? What city pairs? So, I mean, it depends on, you know, how old of an airplane your client’s willing to purchase. If you wanted a Legacy 600, you could …
Multiplying 2-digit by 1-digit with partial products
[Instructor] In this video, we’re going to dig a little bit deeper and try to understand how we might multiply larger and larger numbers. In particular, we’re gonna focus on multiplying two-digit numbers times one-digit numbers. So, I always encourage y…
How The World’s Richest Man Actually Has Very Little Cash...
As of October the 13th, 2021, the Forbes realtime list of billionaires has Elon Musk at number one with a personal net worth of $26.6 billion. If you want some context, that’s about the same as the gross domestic product of Greece. This means Musk’s fortu…
The Stoic Truth: Are You Sabotaging Your Own Success? | STOICISM INSIGHTS #stoicism
Welcome back to Stoicism Insights, your guide to unlocking the timeless wisdom of Stoic philosophy for a more fulfilling life. Today we’re delving into a topic that’s often overlooked: the negative habits that hinder our journey towards virtue and tranqui…