Tens of billions of birds share the planet with us, an astonishing array of species that are present nearly everywhere humans call home—and many places we do not. With their sometimes-flamboyant plumage, joyous dawn serenades, and extraordinary aerial feats, they have captivated human imagination for millennia. Birds are delicate creatures with hollow bones and thin skin protected by downy feathers, but they actually evolved from dinosaurs over 150 million years ago.
Vertebrate paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steve Brusatte explores how dinosaurs gradually developed the trademark features of birds one by one—feathers, wings, beaks, big brains, keen senses, and warm-blooded metabolisms. He investigates why birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the cataclysmic asteroid impact 66 million years ago and chronicles how these survivors rapidly proliferated to produce the many avian species seen today. Along the way, he introduces a variety of remarkable extinct species.
Brusatte’s new book, The Story of Birds: A New History from Their Dinosaur Origins to the Present (Mariner, HarperCollins), is available for purchase.
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