When the Chicxulub impact brought about one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history, most of the dinosaurs quickly ceased to exist.
The massive burn wrought by the six-mile-wide bullet that hit Mexico and set fire to the sky killed off those species that couldn’t adapt to what was at least a wintery sun-free world, at worst an environment filled with poison after being turned end-over-end. After the end of the Cretaceous, through the luck of developing feathers and lightness into the tools of flight only one offshoot managed to survive - today’s birds.
The dinosaurs’ reign had been a successful one. Developing near 230 million years ago, they diversified into every niche Earth could give. The largest beasts to have walked the planet were from the dinosaur clade, which also contained members that could fit in the palm of a child’s hand. Looking back before us to Tyrannosaurus rex, a species that lived at the time of the impact, we can go back another 65 million years to find Stegosaurus. Go back another 65 million years again, and we find Thecodontosaurus, and we’re still 30 million years past the time that Herrerasaurus, one of the first dinosaurs, lived.
Now we’re in the age of mammals. An age we like to call our own, because we’re so successful - a quick glance around us and we see our family, our cats, our dogs, perhaps a bunny or two. If we stop, though, and listen mindfully for just a few minutes above this ever-present human hum, we hear the sparrow, willy wagtail, screeching cockatoos, starlings, peewees, magpies, mynahs, pigeons, crows and butcherbirds. There are probably more I couldn’t name, certainly countless others beyond just my small part of the world.
The birds. That little offshoot of the dinosaurs that survived so long, now contains the most diverse order of terrestrial vertebrates, more so even than the most numerous mammals, rodents. Their niches run through air, ice, ocean, rainforest, desert, city and village; the largest wouldn’t fit in your garage, the smallest could perch on a pencil with twenty of its brothers and sisters.
We’re still in the age of the dinosaurs, and that makes the little kid in me the happiest there could be.
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