Birds from the Cretaceous period went out the same way as the dinosaurs — with a bang

For years , paleontologists have disagree over whether birds from the Cretaceous menstruum went out with a whine — kick the bucket out step by step over the course of 1000000 of years — or with a bang — getting wipe out by the same hoi polloi extinction event that is believed to have killed off Earth ’s most recent ( and concluding ) undulation of dinosaurs .

Now , by conducting an extensive psychoanalysis of bird fogy collected from museums all around the earth , a team of research worker has provide members of the “ bang ” camp with what scientists are calling definitive proof that most antiquated birds perished in the same plenty extinction event as the dinosaur .

About 65 million year ago , a major ecological work shift led to the oddment of the Cretaceous period , all but obliterating the last bread and butter dinosaurs on Earth . What caused the ecological crash and widespread experimental extinction is often debated , though large - scale ruinous events likemeteorite impact(depicted as comically big in the top image , the meteorite responsible for for the mass extinction is estimated to have been close-fitting to be upwardly of 6 miles in diam ) andvolcanic activityare believe to have been the most probable causes .

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For as rarified as dinosaur fossils are , the discovery of the light and fragile bones of prehistorical birds is even rarer . concord to Yale paleontologist Nicholas Longrich , debates over the effect of the mass extinguishing on avian population persist due in no small part to the poor dodo disk of Late Cretaceous shuttlecock .

So what do you do when you ’ve only got a handful of bones to work with ? elementary : canvas everything you ’ve stupefy . To do so , Longrich put together a team of paleontologist and gathered together fossil specimen representing a total of 17 evolutionarily diverse avian species . While all of the specimen were originally discovered in North America , metre had hear the sampling distributed to museums at every niche of the globe — a fact that had long made their study implausibly difficult .

“ The raspberry that had been discover had n’t really been studied in a rigorous way , ” Longrich said . “ We took a much more detailed look at the family relationship between these bones and these birds than anyone had done before . ”

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The researchers ’ finding , which are write in this week ’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , reveal that all of the specimens examined hold up to within 300,000 year of the slew extinction event 65 million years ago . In other words , all of these boo ( and presumably many others ) had persist throughout the Cretaceous period — evolving , adapting , and thriving — right up until the mass extinction event .

“ This proves that these species went extinct very short , in term of geologic metre scale , ” pronounce Longrich . The research squad also note that not one bird in the wide chain of antediluvian specimen they examined is known to have survived into the Paleogene , the geological period of time forthwith follow the mass extinction effect of 65mya .

“ There ’s been growing evidence that these birds were pass over out at the same time as the dinosaurs , ” Longrich said . “ But this new grounds in effect closes the Good Book on the debate . ”

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