Birds Survived Mass Extinction That Wiped Out Dinosaurs Because Of Their Larger Brains

[Guest Nicholas]

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) — The Cretaceous–Tertiary mass extinction 65 million years ago may have wiped out the dinosaurs, but those that survived – the ancestors of today’s birds – may have done so because of their bird brains.

Find the article HERE!

[mommabetts]

Good article, thanks for posting.

[Guest bmorefossil]

hmm so if they are saying that the brain is bigger than they thought then they are saying that their brain has not grown as much as first expected.

[Boesse]

Ehh, I don't buy it. They're not looking at the whole picture. Birds aren't the only thing that survived. Basically, aside from dinosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites, and a few other groups of invertebrates, everything else survives.

The KT extinction is very odd, and extremely selective; aside from birds, everything else that survived was particularly dumb (not sure about early mammals); herps like snakes, lizards, and amphibians are more or less untouched, and they're usually the first to die off.

The KT extinction is a very complex extinction that can't be explained by catastrophic 'magic' asteroids/comets, large scale volcanism, etc.

Bobby

[Guest Nicholas]

I thought the same thing, I suspect that this new evidence will be cleared away in a pile of rubble when people point out other evidence. I personally feel it is a very weak assumption.