Bird owners like to think that their birds are little dinosaurs. But when I was in school, we learned that the dinosaurs had gone extinct. We weren’t really sure why, but one theory said it was because they were ungainly, slow, and stupid. So what’s the story?
Bird evolution 101
The relationship between birds and dinosaurs has been hotly debated for more than 150 years. Here I’ll present a very simplified version of that history. Prior to the time of Charles Darwin, scientists didn’t consider birds and reptiles to be related. Birds had feathers and flew, reptiles didn’t, and that was pretty much the end of it.
Late 19th century
The fossil of an extinct creature called Archaeopteryx was found in 1861; it had feathers and could fly, but also had sharp teeth, a long bony tail, and other features previously only seen in reptiles. Some scientists even suggested for the first time that birds were not only related to reptiles but more specifically to dinosaurs.
First half of 20th century
An influential scientist named Gerhard Heilmann claimed to have conclusively proven that birds and dinosaurs were not related after all, and the scientific community agreed. It was believed that birds evolved from reptiles that were older than dinosaurs.
Second half of 20th century
Almost a hundred years after birds were first suspected to be descended from dinosaurs, new fossil evidence reversed the conventional wisdom once again. Birds were believed to be in a group of dinosaurs called theropods.
This ignited a revolution known as the dinosaur renaissance.
Most contemporary paleontologists have had little interest in dinosaurs; the creatures were an evolutionary novelty, to be sure, and some were very big, but they did not appear to merit much serious study because they did not seem to go anywhere: no modern vertebrates groups were descended from them.Dinosaur renaissance—Scientific American—April 1975
The author continued:
Recent research is rewriting the dinosaur dossier. It appears that they were more interesting creatures, better adapted to a wide range of environments and immensely more sophisticated in their bioenergetic machinery than had been previously thought. In this article I shall be presenting some of the evidence that has led to the reevaluation of the dinosaurs’ role in animal evolution. The evidence suggests, in fact, that the dinosaurs never died out completely. One group still lives. We call them birds.Dinosaur renaissance—Scientific American—April 1975
Over the next 40 years, vigorous debate continued but there is now scientific consensus in a number of areas.
Creatures that we would recognize as modern-day birds lived at the time of dinosaurs. This includes very familiar species like stegasaurus, tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, and pterodactyls. Dinosaurs and birds shared the planet for almost 100 million years!
A catastrophic meteor event about 66 million years ago wiped out most of the world’s animal species, including all dinosaur species… except birds! So, when you learned that dinosaurs went extinct, that’s not true.
What about parrots?
Parrots appeared on the scene around 23 million years ago. Being descended from the ancestors of all birds, they are also dinosaurs. They just didn’t have the pleasure of meeting them personally.
If you don’t believe in science, at the very least you should believe inHollywood movies:
Maybe dinosaurs have more in common with present-day birds than with reptiles.Dr. Alan Grant—Jurassic Park—1993
Look at the pubic bone, turned backward, like a bird’s.
Look at the vertebrae, full of air sacs and hollows, like a bird’s.
And even the word ‘raptor’ means ‘bird of prey’.
And if you’re more apt to believe some random video you see on the Internet, here’s my cockatiel proving he’s a dinosaur.
So, you have your answer. Your bird is indeed a little dinosaur.