A new study reveals how modern birds evolved from dinosaurs and debunks the idea birds came solely from the oldest bird ancestor, the 150 million year-old Archaeopteryx.

Birds evolved from dinosaurs in partial measures over a massive period of time, specifically over millions of years before birds actually manifested wings and feathers.

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According to lead author Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, there was no missing link between birds and dinosaurs.

This evolution happened gradually over time and took tens of millions of years. This means modern birds evolved faster than most other species and at an unprecedented rate.

After studying a database of some 150 dinosaur species, Brusatte and his team compared some 850 features in dinosaurs (including both Tyrannosaurus rex) and birds. The team started with fossils that remarkably show the presence of feathers and lack of it in the gap between their wrist bones.

Their findings present strong evidence that many of these extinct dinosaur species manifest bird-like traits inherent among dinosaurs even before the Archaeopteryx.

Birds appeared about 150 million years ago but unfortunately, it's difficult to pinpoint which family tree this emergence presented itself among dinosaurs and birds.

In addition to these new findings, a controversial theory from the 1940s also suggested this emergence of new body shapes and sizes among various animal species heralds a surge of animal evolution.

According to Graeme Lloyd, co-author of the study from the University of Oxford in England, this is clearly strong evidence of an offshoot leap in evolution that led dinosaurs to transform into the modern bird species of today.

This study was published in the journal, Biology.

TagsHow Birds Evolved From Dinosaurs: No Missing Link Found Between Them, birds dinosaurs evolution, archaeopteryx