Birds are among the most familiar animals on Earth, yet their story stretches back more than 150 million years to the age of the dinosaurs. In this episode, Steve Brusatte, paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and author of “The Story of Birds: A New History from Their Dinosaur Origins to the Present,” traces the extraordinary evolution of birds from feathered dinosaurs to the more than 10,000 species alive today.
Brusatte explains how discoveries of spectacular fossils have revealed that birds are, in fact, living dinosaurs. He discusses how feathers first evolved for warmth and display long before they were adapted for flight, why birds alone survived the asteroid impact that wiped out the rest of the dinosaurs and how they rapidly diversified into the incredible variety of species we see today.
