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The evolution of birds began in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropod dinosaurs named Paraves. [1] Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. For more than a century, the small theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx lithographica from the Late Jurassic period was considered to have been the earliest bird.
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]
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. For the purposes of this article, a 'bird' is considered to be any member of the clade Avialae. [1]
The shared history of birds and dinosaurs is well-established, but exactly how true birds evolved during the Mesozoic is a bit of a mystery. Adding to this conundrum are fossilized footprints of ...
This list of Mesozoic birds is a comprehensive list of all Mesozoic dinosaurs that have been assigned to the clade Avialae (birds, in the broadest sense). The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also genera that are now considered invalid, doubtful (nomen dubium), or were not formally published (nomen nudum), as well as junior synonyms of more established names, and genera that are ...
A 2016 estimate put the number of dinosaur species living in the Mesozoic at 1,543–2,468, [24] [25] compared to the number of modern-day birds (avian dinosaurs) at 10,806 species. [26] Extinct dinosaurs, as well as modern birds, include genera that are herbivorous and others carnivorous, including seed-eaters, fish-eaters, insectivores, and ...
Birds diverged from two-legged therapod dinosaurs (the group T. rex belonged to) during the Jurassic period, but knowledge of their early evolutionary history is hampered by a relative lack of ...
A remarkable event in dinosaur evolution came when small feathered two-legged dinosaurs from a lineage known as theropods gave rise to birds late in the Jurassic, with the oldest-known bird ...