I have been curious about dinosaurs from an early age. I used to be a big fan of the kids show Power Rangers Dino Thunder aired on the Jetix channel at that time, well for that matter I loved all the Power Rangers Series up to Overdrive, as after that I actually lost my interest in watching TV in general. My favorite dinosaur used to be a T-Rex, and why not it was the Dino zord of the red ranger. I will talk about this and my other favorite shows another time, and now let’s focus on dinosaurs for the time being.
I always wondered what caused these majestic creatures to go extinct and how it would have been if they were alive, well certainly I am not going to share my room with one. Actually, dinosaurs never went extinct; well this statement might sound fallacious to you, but it is true. They just evolved into our modern-day birds. Birds descend from a group of dinosaurs known as theropods. A theropod is a dinosaur with hollow bones and three toed limbs. This is the group to which the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex belonged to as well. If you ask me, by looking at birds such as cassowary and ostrich, I need no further proof that birds are indeed dinosaurs. Just look at them.
In 1861 the first skeleton of an Archaeopteryx was found in Germany. This was an important event in the history of paleontology. This was an animal that was the transition between flightless feathered dinosaurs and modern avian birds (birds that can fly). Archaeopteryx had the bird like features such as wings and feathers and they could fly as well as dinosaurs like features such as teeth. It had its collar bone (Furcula) fused just like the birds of today. Interestingly most dinosaurs belonging to theropods also had this fused collar bone. Modern-day birds have hollow bones just like the theropods. This feature helps the birds in their flight and can be attributed to the theropods dinosaurs being agile during their hunt for food.
So now the question arises why ancestors of birds survived extinction caused by the massive asteroid that hit the surface of earth and why large dinosaurs could not make it? Well there may be many possible explanations to it, such as large dinosaurs couldn’t possibly hide from the destruction caused due asteroid hit. All that heat and destruction must have made food sources scare, so larger dinosaurs were unable to get sufficient food, while the ancestors of birds due to their smaller size needing less diet were able to get enough nourishment to survive and evolved into birds. Another question arises how birds have a beak while a dinosaur does not. It happened as the two premaxillary bones fused together to form the beak, which remain separated in earlier dinosaurs. So, you see there is a lot of fusion first the collar and now the premaxillary bones.
Finally, we could say dinosaurs are right here living with us and outnumber the total population of human being by a large number. So, to see a dinosaur just look out of the window, I bet you will surely see one. If not that is a concern. You may also be having a dinosaur on your dinner table tonight!