Why Did Birds Survive And Not Pterosaurs ?
Pterosaurs lived as far back as 220 million years ago and died out during the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction of 65 million years ago. |
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But birds survived. So, why did birds survive and not Pterosaurs? Birds are contemptuously believed to have miniscule brains, but in fact, the opposite is true.
It was precisely this superior brain power that ensured their survival when 85 percent of animals that inhabited the planet were annihilated. Modern CT scans reveal that the brain of the bird was so well developed and advanced that it was able to reason out solutions toward adaptation to a changing environment. It is precisely this reason why birds survived and not pterosaurs. Scientists believe that a key feature of survival was the development of a structure called ‘wulst’ in the brain that is linked to visual perception. Pterosaurs and earlier forms of birds lacked this structure. In the process of evolution, wulst is much larger especially in owls and similar species which are heavily reliant on eyesight.
Scientists conclude that the ancestors of today’s birds had a competitive edge over the older lineages of birds and pterosaurs because of a well-developed, structurally multi-faceted brain. This has laid to rest the mystery of why these ancestors survived the period of mass extinction while pterosaurs and similar birds did not. Their conclusions are substantiated by a comparison of the brain cavity of the Archaeopteryx, a bird that dates to 147 million years, and modern-type marine birds that date to 55 million years that survived to 10 million years after the age of mass extinction. The difference in development is too pronounced and glaring to ignore.
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