Living Dinosaurs – The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds : The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds

This book explores the bio-molecular aspects of avian biology as well as the anatomy of dinosaurs. It bridges the gap between those who study bird fossils and those who study the living animals. The first section reviews the early ancestry of birds and the conditions under which they and their nearest relatives diversified in the Cretaceous.

Living Dinosaurs offers a snapshot of our current understanding of the origin and evolution of birds.  After slumbering for more than a century, avian palaeontology has been awakened by startling new discoveries on almost every continent. Controversies about whether dinosaurs had real feathers or whether birds were related to dinosaurs have been swept away and replaced by new and more difficult questions: How old is the avian lineage? How did birds learn to fly? Which birds survived the great extinction that ended the Mesozoic Era and how did the avian genome evolve? Answers to these questions may help us understand how the different kinds of living birds are related to one another and how they evolved into their current niches. More importantly, they may help us understand what we need to do to help them survive the dramatic impacts of human activity on the planet.