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An alternate theory to the dinosaurian origin of birds, espoused by a few scientists, notably Larry Martin and Alan Feduccia, states that birds (including maniraptoran "dinosaurs") evolved from early archosaurs like Longisquama. [9] This theory is contested by most other paleontologists and experts in feather development and evolution. [10]
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 and extinct non-avian dinosaurs share many unique skeletal traits. [1] Moreover, fossils of more than thirty species of non-avian dinosaur with preserved feathers have been ...
The evolution of birds is thought to have begun in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. The earliest known species in Aves is Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the Late Jurassic period. Modern phylogenetics place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda.
The age of the dinosaurs never really ended—it only evolved. Birds (and their more reptilian cousins, the Crocodilia ) are the modern-day legacy of dinosaur’s 165-million-year-long stint on Earth.
Archaeopteryx, a possible ancestor to the birds, appears in the fossil record, along with triconodontid and symmetrodont mammals. Diversity in stegosaurian and theropod dinosaurs. 131 Ma First pine trees. 140 Ma Orb-weaver spiders appear. 135 Ma Rise of the angiosperms.
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Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the non-avian dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to Ornithomimus velox. It contains the major subgroups Avialae, Dromaeosauridae, Troodontidae, Oviraptorosauria, and Therizinosauria. Ornitholestes and the Alvarezsauroidea are also often included.
Birds evolved from certain feathered theropod dinosaurs, and there is no real dividing line between birds and non-avian dinosaurs except that some of the former survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event while the latter did not.