HUGE, meat-eating, ground-dwelling dinosaurs — known as theropods — evolved into the birds we know today over a period of 50 million years, a new University of Adelaide study reveals.
Scientists have long known birds evolved from dinosaurs, but it was never known exactly how fast this happened.
University of Adelaide Associate Professor Michael Lee led the latest study, which measured different rates of evolution in all the groups of dinosaurs and found the ancestors of birds were the fastest evolving of the dinosaurs.
The scientists examined more than 1500 anatomical traits of dinosaurs and found theropod dinosaurs kept getting smaller and smaller, eventually evolving into modern day birds.
“We realised that one particular group (the theropods) was evolving four times as fast as other dinosaurs,” Associate Professor Lee said.
“This rapidly evolving group is the ancestors of birds today.”
The scientists conducted the research by looking at the skeletons of all the different theropods.
“It is interesting as it turns out that the ultimate dinosaur — the longest lineage of dinosaurs — the birds, which are still around us today, also happen to be the most adaptable and evolvable,” Associate Professor Lee said.
While the study wasn’t the first to prove birds evolved from dinosaurs — a known fact for the past few decades — Associate Professor Lee said it was important.
“What we did was clarify how that major change occurred,” he said.
The study appeared in the journal Science.
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Originally published as A bird’s eye view on dinosaur evolution