For Scientific American Science Quickly, I'm Kendra Pierre-Louis, in for Rachel Feldman.
From television shows like Land of the Lost and Terra Nova to the blockbuster Jurassic Park movie franchise,
Hollywood loves to envision what it would mean for humans to live alongside dinosaurs.
But the truth is, we already do.
Birds, after all, are dinosaurs.
But how did birds survive the extinction event that killed so many non-avian dinosaurs?
Steve Brussati, a professor of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh,
and the author of the upcoming book, The Story of Birds,
dug into the subject of bird survival in the May issue of Scientific American.
He's here today to speak with us about it.
Thanks so much for joining us today, Steve.
My pleasure, Kendra.
Thank you.
So it 's funny because I think most people by now know that birds are dinosaurs,
but I do n't think most of us really kind of think about how they survived
while like dinosaur species like the T-Rex did n't.
You recently wrote a feature for Scientific American digging into how birds survived.
What interested you in the subject?
Yeah, so the article I wrote for Scientific American, it tackles that question.
Which really has been a mystery for a long time among paleontologists.