TLS02E07 Bird origins

Listen to this episode from Terrible Lizards on Spotify. The idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs has actually been around for a century now, though it has perhaps only become relatively common knowledge with the general public in the last couple of decades. Even so, while many people now know this, quite why we know the two groups are linked (aside from the plethora of feathered dinosaurs) is often not understood. There’s only so much we can cover in one podcast, but this week we go through some of the features of birds that are seen in dinosaur fossils and so help show the evolutionary links between the two. Our special guest this time is Lucy Eckersley The Punk Biologist who makes the mistake of asking about sexual selection in dinosaurs about which Dave would happily talk for hours if allowed to. A post on the recognition of the importance of Archaeopteryx for bird origins by Darwin: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/the-historical-impact-of-archaeopteryx/ A blogpost on the dinosaurian furcula: https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/the-furcula/ A long post summarising Dave’s work on sexual selection in dinosaurs - https://archosaurmusings.wordpress.com/2020/05/11/sexual-selection-in-dinosaurs-the-story-so-far/