Why did some lineages of birds endure, while others perished? 🐓
When the dinosaur-killing asteroid collided with Earth about 66 million years ago, it triggered a slew of horrific events — shockwaves, wildfires, acid rain, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and nuclear winter-like conditions — that killed about 80% of all animal species. But, mysteriously, some dinosaurs survived: the birds.
Although it's not clear exactly how larger forebrains helped birds survive, as the forebrain is responsible for many processes,"it likely had to do with behavioral plasticity — the birds with bigger forebrains could probably modify their own behavior quickly enough to keep up with how quickly their environment was changing," study lead researcher Chris Torres, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow in the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine at Ohio...
"It has a nearly complete skull, which is incredibly rare both for this particular species as well as fossil birds in general," said Torres, who did the research as doctoral student in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin."This new fossil preserves most of the bones that make up the skull, providing us with our first complete looks at many of those bones.
Living birds have"enormous forebrains relative to the rest of their brains," Torres said. The forebrains of today's birds are large compared with the forebrains of ancient birds and dinosaurs that lived just before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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