Re: "Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth..."

[Vlad Petnicki <bucketfoot-al@justice.com>]

On Sat, 29 May 2004 15:53:40 +0200, David Marjanovic
wrote:

> 
> > What I am wondering is if birds really did come from
> just one narrow line
> of
> > coelorusaurs.
> 
> I almost wanted to answer, but that's not possible
when
> I don't know your
> definition of "birds". :-)
> 
> > My question on birds originating in Antartica or on
> the southern continent
> > is were not other dinosaurs also in that place at
the
> time.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > If as the genetic studies suggest the major
> categories of birds
> > diverged during the Cretaceous,
> 
> Forget them, they are miscalibrated... but there are
> indeed several clades
> of modern birds known from Cretaceous fossils: duck
> relatives
> (Anseriformes), chicken relatives (Galliformes), loons
> (Gaviidae), arguably
> cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae), and what seem to be
> shorebirds
> (Charadriiformes).
> 
> > How come they were the only dinosaurs?
> 
> They were small. They weren't directly dependent on
> green plant parts. They
> were able to fly, allowing them to live off widely
> dispersed food. This
> sounds plausible, I think.

And - they had FEATHERS, which turned out to be 
remarkably good insulation against cold - think of
birds huddling together in a burrow, and you get an
idea why they survived while the dinosaurs did not.

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