pangur-and-grim:

deliriumcrow:

dr-sparklefairy:

internetpaleontologist:

2016 Les Mondes Perdus

@pangur-and-grim

Yeah, I can see how this creature was the ancestor of modern birds …

I hate to be that person (no I don’t, I love it) BUT this is Yutyrannus huali, a tyrannosauroid, and birds are not a direct descendent. tyrannosaurs & birds are groups that parted ways in the Jurassic (birds shrank, developing wings capable of flight, while tyrannosaurs ballooned up into gigantic carnivores).

now this guy below? that’s Sapeornis, a stem-bird that lived in the early Cretaceous, around the same time as Yutyrannus – look at how clearly those two groups had diverged by then!

descendants of guys like Sapeornis survived the K-T extinction event, as it turns out being small, able to fly long distances, with a toothless mouth perfect for taking advantage of seed caches is just the right formula for surviving a sunless ash-filled Apocalypse

and yes, they went on to become chickens, but also golden eagles, maribou storks, birds of paradise, cassowaries, penguins, hummingbirds, owls, you name it. in terms of sheer diversity of species, living dinosaurs still vastly outnumber us mammals (16% of modern vertebrates, vs our measly 8%)