
Why Birds Survived, and Dinosaurs Went Extinct, After an Asteroid Hit Earth - pseudolus
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-birds-survived-and-dinosaurs-went-extinct-after-asteroid-hit-earth-180975801/
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albanread
"The entire reason palaeontologists make that split is because of a
catastrophe that struck 66 million years ago."

True; also the reason we have human people reading websites is partly due to
the same catastrophe.

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kubanczyk
The main point:

> Instead of teeth to catch, the birds evolved beaks to pluck and pick.

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boxed
Sort of implicit in the article seems to be small body size too. Before the
extinction event, there were a lot of ceratopsids which were beaked, but also
quite large. It's not great to have a big body when you're trying to survive
for years in a climate where little actual food exists.

Anyway, my problem with the argument is that some mammals obviously survived.
Why? We had worse lungs, roughly the same amount of protection against the
cold as many small dinosaurs... so what gives?

