Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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.
Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs (Aves, i.e. birds) has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event .
For premium support please call: 800-290-4726 more ways to reach us
Avialae ("bird wings") is a clade containing the only living dinosaurs, the birds, and their closest relatives.It is usually defined as all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds (Aves) than to deinonychosaurs, though alternative definitions are occasionally used (see below).