Dinosaurs’ Demise Led to Rise of Birds: New Study

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid collision with Earth initiated a catastrophic chain of events that led to the extinction of approximately 75% of the planet’s species, including the dinosaurs. This mass extinction is widely credited with creating ecological niches that allowed mammals and other life forms to flourish, eventually paving the way for human evolution. Among the survivors of this cataclysm were the ancestors of modern birds, believed to have evolved from certain smaller dinosaur species. The prevailing thought has been that these smaller creatures managed to endure the post-impact scarcity of resources, eventually evolving into the diverse bird species we are familiar with today.

However, recent research challenges the notion that the asteroid impact directly influenced bird evolution. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on February 12, this study analyzed 124 modern bird species to investigate the impact’s effect on their evolutionary trajectory.

Dr. Shaoyuan Wu, an evolutionary biologist at Jiangsu Normal University in China, and part of the study team, stated, “This catastrophe didn’t have an impact on modern birds.” This assertion is based on findings that suggest modern birds share a common ancestor that lived around 130 million years ago, long before the asteroid event. This ancestor gradually diversified into various bird lineages over millions of years. The study, as highlighted in The New York Times, reveals that the evolutionary ‘family tree’ of birds was branching out steadily over time, both before and after the asteroid’s impact, indicating that the event did not significantly alter the course of bird evolution.

This research adds a new dimension to the ongoing scientific investigation into the asteroid impact’s consequences, which nearly obliterated life on Earth through massive tsunamis, extensive forest fires, and a prolonged global winter.