Birds are Dinosaurs, Research Concludes

Gigantoraptor erlianensis. Copyright Raúl Martín.

When I studied zoology, it was correct to refer to class Aves as avian reptiles. That, to me, was a giant leap from the (then) popularly held assumption that birds and dinosaurs had little to do with each other, except for some superficial resemblance. Growing up as a precocious paleontology nerd, however, I was enamored with the idea that birds and dinosaurs were one and the same thing.

Now the consensus in the scientific community is that birds are in fact a group of therapod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic era. The take-home message (I've waited a long time to say this):

Birds are dinosaurs.

Not just morphologically similar animals. Not distant cousins. Birds are dinosaurs.

From therapod to archaeopteryx. Copyright Davide Bonnadonna.

This post by Darren Naish on the miniaturization of therapod dinosaurs cannot be bettered, so I will only outline a few key points behind the amazing statement I just made, before you head over and check it out.

Queue bullet-points...

• Therapods are directly ancestral to birds.
• This group included Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor.
• Birds are the 'end-product' of millions of years of miniaturization.
• Evolution occurred very rapidly in this group.
• Snouts shortened, relative brain size increased, teeth shrank and lost serrations.
• Birds are small, feathered dinosaurs.

So there you have it. Next time you see a bird, make sure you point it out to passersby and call it a dinosaur. They might think you're nuts. But then, once upon a time, the Earth was flat, and birds were just birds. But now we know differently.

For further reading, have a look at this paper, lead authored by the University of Adelaide's Michael Lee, on the miniaturization of the dinosaurian ancestors of birds. There is also a well-presented book on the subject called Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds by John Long and Paul Schouten. For a great blog on flying reptiles, check out paleontologist and paleoartist Mark Witton.