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Four distinct lineages of bird survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, giving rise to ostriches and relatives (Palaeognathae), waterfowl (Anseriformes), ground-living fowl (Galliformes), and "modern birds" (Neoaves).
The ancestor of all living birds lived sometime in the Late Cretaceous, and in the 65 million years since the extinction of the rest of the dinosaurs, this ancestral lineage diversified into the major groups of birds alive today.
The present scientific consensus is that birds are a group of maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs that originated during the Mesozoic Era. A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany.
Birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which are known for the ability to walk on their hind legs rather than on all fours.
Birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic (around 165–150 million years ago) and their classic small, lightweight, feathered, and winged body plan was pieced together gradually over tens of millions of years of evolution rather than in one burst of innovation.
Scientists have tended to view modern bird diversity as the result of a burst of evolutionary activity that occurred after the fateful day 66 million years ago when a six-mile-wide asteroid...
The massive meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have sparked a rapid evolution of bird species over just a few million years. The few bird lineages that survived the extinction bottleneck gave rise to stunning diversity, resulting in the more than 10,000 species alive today.
The Science of Birds - An introduction to the long evolutionary history of birds, from the Jurassic to the mass extinction at the end of the Creataceous.
Bird evolution: How birds took to the air. Research on the origin and evolution of birds has gathered pace in recent years, aided by a continuous stream of new fossil finds as well as molecular phylogenies.
How Birds Evolved from Dinosaurs. A remarkable fossil record of the dinosaurs that led to birds reveals how evolution produces entirely new kinds of organisms. By Stephen Brusatte. Jon Foster.