By Helen BriggsBBC News
24 May 2018
The ancestors of modern birds may
have survived the asteroid strike that wiped out the rest of their kin by
living on the forest floor.
The new theory, based on studying
fossilised plants and ornithological data, helps explain how birds came to dominate
the planet.
The asteroid impact 66 million
years ago laid waste to the world's forests.
Ground-dwelling bird ancestors
managed to survive, eventually taking to the trees when the flora recovered.
"It seems clear that being a
relatively small-bodied bird capable of surviving in a tree-less world would
have conferred a major survival advantage in the aftermath of the asteroid
strike," said Dr Daniel Field of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the
University of Bath.
We already know that the early
ancestors of modern birds were probably capable of flight, and relatively small
in size.
Scientists have now pieced
together their ecology to better understand how these partridge-like bird
ancestors managed to avoid destruction in a particularly bleak moment in the
Earth's history.
"Teasing these stories from
the rock record is a challenge when the action took place over 66 million years
ago, over a relatively short period of time," said Dr Field, who led a
team of UK, US and Swedish researchers.
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