• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

How Did Birds Survive While Dinosaurs Went Extinct?

February 7, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

The ConversationCurious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected].


If dinosaurs died, how come there are birds? Caiden S., age 9, Wylie, Texas

Advertisement

Everyone knows what a bird is – and pretty much everyone knows what a dinosaur is. But not everyone is aware that birds evolved from dinosaurs approximately 160 million years ago.

In fact, birds and dinosaurs lived together for about 100 million years. Birds descended from a particular group of dinosaurs called the dromaeosaurs, or “running lizards,” which were a family of feathered theropod or “beast foot” dinosaurs that included velociraptor.

But when an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago off the coast of what is now Mexico, dinosaurs went extinct – but some birds remained. You might wonder why.

By acting like detectives, scientists who specialize in bird evolution are trying to figure out why birds weren’t wiped out too. They piece together clues like fossils and other evidence about life on Earth long ago. For now, scientists have ideas about why birds survived, but no firm answers.

Perks of being toothless

Today’s birds have no teeth. Instead they have beaks or bills, which come in many shapes and sizes for eating and drinking. But some of the birds that lived in dinosaur times actually had teeth. Others did not.

In the foreground is an artist's rendering of a bird head. In the background is a fossil photo showing that bird's skull. Teeth are clearly seen in the jaws.
Ichthyornis dispar was a primitive seabird with teeth that lived during the late Cretaceous Period – from 100 million to 66 million years ago – in North America. Courtesy of Michael Hanson and Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar.

After the asteroid struck Earth long ago, all birds with teeth went extinct. But many of the toothless ones kept living. Some scientists think not having teeth is what allowed these birds to survive.

Fossils of early toothless birds show they were able to eat more plant-based food – specifically nuts, fruits and seeds. This meant they relied less on eating other animals than birds with teeth did. Some scientists think this difference in diet became a big advantage after the asteroid impact.

When the asteroid struck Earth, it immediately caused massive tsunamis and earthquakes. A giant pulse of heat from the impact caused enormous wildfires near where the asteroid hit. In the months that followed, huge amounts of dust filled the layer of air that surrounds Earth. It blocked the sun, making less light available for plants to grow.

Advertisement

For animals that ate plants, there was much less food. Many went extinct, which spelled trouble for the animals that ate them.

Since so many animal species died – and plants were struggling to get enough sunlight – food would have been hard to find if you were a bird. But if you could peck the ground and find buried seeds or nuts to eat, that might have made all the difference in your ability to survive as a species.

How science works

Of course, it’s possible other factors caused toothless birds to survive while their toothy cousins perished – including luck.

For now, it’s a mystery with no definite answer. This is how science works. Scientists formulate ideas or hypotheses using existing knowledge and information. Then they test their ideas – either by conducting experiments or by gathering more evidence. This information either supports or disproves their ideas.

Advertisement

So the scientists who study bird evolution are ready to revise the story of how birds made it and dinosaurs didn’t as they collect more information from rocks, fossils and ancient DNA.


Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected]. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.The Conversation

Chris Lituma, Assistant Professor of Wildlife and Fisheries Resources, West Virginia University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Norway coalition talks start, with climate and oil in focus
  2. Indonesian fintech Xendit is now a unicorn, with $150M in fresh funding led by Tiger Global
  3. U.S. Senator Cruz vows to block new Democratic debt ceiling ploy
  4. Yellen says U.S. may exhaust cash by Oct 18 barring debt ceiling rise

Source Link: How Did Birds Survive While Dinosaurs Went Extinct?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Meet Ned: The Lonely Lefty Snail Looking For Love
  • “America Will Lead The Next Giant Leap”: NASA Announces New Milestone In Hunt For Exoplanets
  • What Did Neanderthals Sound Like?
  • One Star System Could Soon Dazzle Us Twice With Nova And Supernova Explosions
  • Unethical Experiments: When Scientists Really Should Have Stopped What They Were Doing Immediately
  • The First Humans Were Hunted By Leopards And Weren’t The Apex Predators We Thought They Were
  • Earth’s Passage Through The Galaxy Might Be Written In Its Rocks
  • What Is An Einstein Cross – And Why Is The Latest One Such A Unique Find?
  • If We Found Life On Mars, What Would That Mean For The Fermi Paradox And The Great Filter?
  • The Longest Living Mammals Are Giants That Live Up To 200 Years In The Icy Arctic
  • Entirely New Virus Detected In Bat Urine, And It’s Only The 4th Of Its Kind Ever Isolated
  • The First Ever Full Asteroid History: From Its Doomed Discovery To Collecting Its Meteorites
  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version