Surviving the Impact

Why did birds make it when the great dinosaurs did not? The winners were small and ate seeds. After the asteroid hit, dust and soot blocked the sun, plants withered, and the food chain collapsed from the bottom up. Giant plant-eaters and the predators that hunted them starved within years. But a sparrow-sized, seed-eating bird could get by on the tough seeds scattered across the dead landscape, waiting for the green to return.

A New Golden Age

With the giants gone, the surviving birds inherited an empty world — and they ran with it. Today there are more bird species than mammal species, spread into nearly every habitat on Earth. Penguins swim, ostriches sprint, eagles hunt from above, hummingbirds hover at flowers. Each one is a dinosaur that found a new way to live. The dinosaur story is not a tale of failure. It is a comeback that is still being written.