When did dinosaurs become birds?

Today’s birds evolved from dinosaurs, which makes them dinosaurs! Just as bats are mammals, birds are a strange breed of dinosaur that have small, evolved wings and the ability to fly.

Birds evolved from “bird of prey” dinosaurs – den Velociraptor Family. The oldest fossil of a true bird, defined as a dinosaur that could fly by flapping its wings, is Archeopteryx, which lived in the late Jurassic about 150 million years ago.

But since close “raptor” cousins ​​of birds are known from the Early Jurassic, it’s likely that birds first took to the skies around 170 million years ago.

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Asked by: Emily Brown, Nottingham

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