It might be hard to believe but the birds we see flying around our skies today share their ancestry with dinosaurs! That's right, bird evolution is a complex process that's taken place over hundreds of thousands of years to bring us the wide array of feathered species we see today.
In this blog, we're going to take a deep dive into the history of birds, their ancestry and their evolutionary story. So, if you've been asking yourself - what did birds evolve from? You're in the right place! Strap yourself in, we're heading back 115 million years to see where the evolutionary history of birds started...
Discovering dinosaurs with feathers
When we think about dinosaurs, our minds are often taken to large, scaly reptiles. Palaeontologists have been researching dinosaurs for decades, but very little was known about the evolution of birds and their connection to dinosaurs until the 1960s. At this time, a dinosaur called Deinonychus was discovered; this was a small dinosaur that walked the earth around 115 million years ago. This intriguing species had a lot of similarities to living birds today! It was intelligent, fast-moving and covered in feathers!
This discovery really opened researchers eyes & encouraged them to look at the link between modern-day birds and dinosaurs more closely. Lots of new research was carried out on old fossil specimens to help strengthen the connection between birds and dinosaurs. Using new technologies, palaeontologists were able to identify a plethora of features and behaviours that both dinosaurs and modern birds share... how exciting! Many people now believe that all dinosaurs had some feathers.
A changing view of dinosaurs
While nineteenth century researchers may have found the notion of bird-like dinosaurs completely bizzare, it's now common knowledge that dinosaurs probably weren't the slow, intimidating reptiles that we once thought of. These new discoveries & modern depictions of dinosaurs are showing us how closely dinosaurs and birds are related. The Dienonychus that's featured in the Natural History Museum shows feathers, giving museum visitors a much more accurate idea of how these bird-like creatures would've looked 115 million years ago!
What did birds evolve from?
The Deinonychus belonged to a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which would later evolve into birds. These were bipedal dinosaurs that ate meat and scoured the earth hunting for food. The famous Tyrannosaurus rex was also a Theropod... does that make you look at the birds in your gardens a bit differently?
Up until now, the earliest record of bird-like features that we saw in dinosaur fossils came from the Archaeoptryx (fossil shown above). When you see recreations of this dinosaur, you'll notice that it's almost indistinguishable from a modern-day hawk or eagle. With new information being unearthed, researchers now believe that the evolution of birds was much more gradual than we first thought, starting with the Dienonychus several million years before the Archaeopteryx evolved.
Why did birds evolve?
Bird evolution follows a similar path to other stories of evolution. In the same way that giraffes developed longer necks to reach leaves high in the trees, researchers believe that some theropods like Dienonychus headed into the trees to search for better food or protection. Over time, they evolved into Archaeopteryx and other winged creatures to make the skies and the trees more accessible.
You might be wondering - why did birds evolve to be so much smaller? Well, the body size of theropods gradually decreased and we can only assume that the smaller, lighter and faster bird ancestors were able to survive more often than their larger-bodied brothers and sisters. This led to the development of birds as we see them today!
So there you have it, a bit of an insight into the creatures that birds evolved from and their history spanning across the decades! We're amazed at the variety and beauty of modern-day birds, so it's amazing to know that they've been growing and evolving alongside other species for as long as we can remember.
If you want to help the birds we see today continue to thrive, take a look at some of the nutritious bird foods we offer here at Really Wild Bird Food.
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