An Asteroid Wiped Out Dinosaurs. Did It Help Birds Flourish?
source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/science/bird-evolution-asteroid-dinosaurs.html
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Origins
An Asteroid Wiped Out Dinosaurs. Did It Help Birds Flourish?
Today’s birds began their evolution into more than 10,000 species long before the fateful collision, a new genetic study found.
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. The catastrophe led to the extinction of as many as three-quarters of all species on Earth, including dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex. But some flying feathered dinosaurs survived, and eventually evolved into the more than 10,000 species of birds living today, including hummingbirds, condors, parrots and owls.
Based on the fossil record, paleontologists have long argued that the asteroid’s impact was followed by a big pulse of bird evolution. The mass extinction of other animals may have eliminated a lot of competition for the birds, giving them the chance to evolve into the remarkable diversity of species that fly around us today.
But a new study on the DNA of 124 bird species challenges that idea. An international team of scientists found that birds began diversifying tens of millions of years before the fateful collision, suggesting that the asteroid had no major effect on bird evolution.
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Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column. More about Carl Zimmer
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