Are Birds Modern-Day Dinosaurs? | National Geographic

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]