#petdino

So... Are Birds Dinosaurs?

No; birds aren't dinosaurs, but they're the closest thing we've got. At the end of the Cretaceous period roughly 66 million years ago, an asteroid wiped out 75% of life on Earth. Among the survivors were a small group of ground-dwelling birds: the ancient ancestors of modern day chickens.

The birds we know and love today, wattles and all, haven't undergone many evolutionary changes since then. Although crocodiles, as a species, are older than chickens, they existed alongside the dinosaurs like neighbors rather than family.

Chickens are actually direct, albeit petite - descendants. As a result, chicken DNA is surprisingly most closely related to dinosaur DNA.