"How Birds survived and thrived after the K-T asteroid." Topic

Gizmodo stuff:

"The elimination of forests basically left a long-term signature on the subsequent evolutionary history of birds," study author Daniel J. Field, an
evolutionary paleobiologist at the University of Bath, told Gizmodo. "We think that only non-tree dwelling bird species would be able to pass through."

The researchers created their hypothesis by looking at a host of different data points. For example, tree pollen went missing from the fossil record for a thousand years after the asteroid strike. Bird fossils from that time period seem only to consist of ground-dwellers. Put that together, and the story emerges: An asteroid hit Earth and wiped out the trees, meaning an evolutionary dead-end for any bird that couldn't make do elsewhere.

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The fossilized remains of a tiny bird that lived 62 million years ago suggests that birds burst out of the evolutionary gates once their dinosaur cousins were gone, rapidly diversifying into most of the lineages we see today.

Within four million years of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event (K-Pg)—a mere blink of the eye in evolutionary terms—as many as ten major bird lineages were already in place, according to new research published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. With the dinosaurs gone, and with habitats re-emerging, many of these pioneering species would diversify even further, eventually evolving into the 10,000 species of birds around today.

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Fascinating! Things do tend to thrive when you get rid of most of their predators.

I'm still waiting for someone to start calling their chicken fillet sandwiches Dino Sandwiches. I would become a regular customer, just because of the name. :)

Dan

Fascinating! Things do tend to thrive when you get rid of most of their predators

Not really Dan, its more than that. If you lose your environment you are in trouble too. The ground dwelling birds did better than the tree dwelling ones. Then, your food supply has to survive. The seed eating birds may have been in trouble.

" Things tend to thrive etc"
The local natural history museum has a wonderful diorama that shows a small population of desert rats whose population starts to boom as the rainy season sets in and available food increases.

The Western taipans, that eat the rat, start to increase. As the rats start to eat out their food sources, their numbers drop. So do the snakes, dropping to disasterous levels. In other words, predator numbers are held in balance by population growth.

So numbers have only a little to do with predation but a lot more to do with the food supplies.

This is common. Every few years rodents populations explode (classic example the lemmings) those years fox populations explode too. Then in the year or so after it's meager living for Foxes and fox cub survival drop drastically.

Indeed. You could expostulate that a species would not thrive without predators. The exception being, as usual, Man.

You could expostulate that a species would not thrive without predators

You could, but I think you'd be wrong. Apex predators (by definition) do not have natural predators.

But Man, either directly by tiger hunting, or indirectly by destroying the Tiger's habitat, is the ultimate Apex predator. But our actions don't fall under natural predation.