🐦 From dinosaurs to birds

Yes. Scientists now agree that birds are a kind of dinosaur that never died out. They descended from small, feathered, meat-eating dinosaurs and carry many of the same features, like hollow bones and wishbones. So the sparrow in your garden is a real dinosaur, just a small and feathery one.

Feathers did not start out for flying at all. The first feathers were simple and fuzzy, and they most likely helped dinosaurs stay warm or show off bright colours to each other. Only much later did some feathers grow long and stiff enough to help their owners glide and finally fly.

Archaeopteryx was an amazing creature, about the size of a crow, that was half dinosaur and half bird. It had feathers and wings like a bird, but also teeth, clawed hands and a long bony tail like a dinosaur. It is one of the best clues we have that birds slowly evolved from dinosaurs.

Almost all dinosaurs died out long ago, but one group made it through: the ancestors of today's birds. These small, feathered dinosaurs survived the disaster that wiped out the giants, and over millions of years their descendants became every bird alive today. So dinosaurs are still all around us.