Why Birds Survived While Pterosaurs Went Extinct

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Birds and Pterosaurs...they both flew and they both had beaks, but only one made it out of the late cretaceous. What gives?

#beastlord #animalgame #liongamer

Artwork in thumbnail by Jaime Chirinos

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[Intrusion]

Azdharchids is what happens when you mix a great blue heron and a frickin giraffe

[mhdfrb]

Vast majority of birds also went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous - a current hypothesis is that the handful of surviving Neornithean lineages were all small [ground-foraging seed-eaters] from which all modern birds evolved. Terrestrial granivory seems to have been the only bird-niche that remained viable in the immediate aftermath of the impact.

There were no small ground-foraging seed-eating pterosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. They were a mix of medium-to-giant carnivores, piscivores and possibly frugivores. Sucked to be them.

Also, for the saying that birds outcompeted small pterosaurs, birds appeared million of years before pterosaurs went in to decline. Its more likely the smaller pterosaurs were outcompeted by the young of larger pterosaurs which were doing pretty well. There's a huge amount of preservational bias when it comes to pterosaur fossils. I once found an article that said the presence of large pterosaurs stopped early birds getting much larger, and it was the small size of these birds that enabled them to survive the extinction event.

[qwertyuiopgarth]

I expect that there were some species that survived the extinction event itself and maybe even the ecological fluctuations afterwards, but just didn't make it very far into the Eocene. A sort of "almost, but not quite".

[posticusmaximus]

I think the biggest factor was small size and "scraps" diet, i.e. seeds, general omnivory. Although plants were hit hards, there were lots of seeds around that big pterosaurs couldn't eat.

[yissibiiyte]

By the end of the Cretaceous all pterosaurs were too massive to survive an extinction. Most birds went extinct too, with only small ones surviving. If there were small pterosaurs around at the time they could have possibly survived.

[Headless_Bill]

RIP closest things we've gotten to wyverns.

[ezradanger]

My 5-year-old asked me this very question yesterday and I did not have a good answer. Here's to hoping I have a good answer by the time I finish the video lol

[hellstorm]

Basically what is said is that birds were already outcompeting pterosaurs in smaller niches, so it was rather matter of time for the balance to shift more in favor of birds. The extinction event just speeded up that process.

[KAZVorpal]

It should be noted that the dominant kind of bird in the Cretaceous were a kind that didn't survive:
The enantiornithes.
They had branched off from the future modern birds, ornithurines, early on, with a different shoulder structure, more commonly retaining teeth, et cetera.

But because they were dominant, enantiornithes occupied the major ecosystems, like trees and forests, while the ornithurines were mostly in small niches like ground/burrow dwelling and water.

The dominant birds, therefore, depended on trees and open air for reproduction and shelter, and were wiped out along with those ecosystems, while the semiaquatic and ground dwellers survived.

In fact, the surviving birds were a lot like the galliformes (fowl like chickens) and anseriformes (water fowl like ducks). One genus did indeed evolve into galliformes and anseriformes, while others evolved into neoaves (most other birds) and others into the paleognaths (ostriches and emus).

[NLance]

I was waiting for it but I noticed a lack of mention of feathers and the wonders of bird feet. Birds had feathers that protected them from the environment at that time as well. They were good at keeping the body cool and warm in unfavorable temperatures. Birds also have feet that are basically bone, modified scaly feathers, skin, and tendons, equipped with close-sitting bloodvessels that exchange heat between the outgoing and incoming veins. Which meant their feet did not freeze in the cold. These adaptations made them way more likely to survive harsh conditions than the fuzzy flying reptiles.

[Foxtrottangoabc]

Birds flew above the astetoid when they saw it heading in fast, they f$#@&d off fast !

[brandondavidson]

I just love the idea of a tiny pterosaur. Long before they got so big, just a little leathery guy.

[SoulDelSol]

Birds couldnt fill niche fully until big guys got smoked

[Eye_Exist]

it would be cool to know an estimation of how much of the earth surface have we actually excavated paleontologically and archaeologiclally.

because assuming it's something under 1% (both ground and under sea) it means we are missing almost all of the data, meaning the dots we have are by all means so few we likely have entirely wrong picture.

to the dinosaur question this implies that a) because birds existed there were also bird size land dinosaurs, and b) because birds survived the similar sized land dinosaurs also survived for possibly few million years and we just don't know it because the small skeletons fossilize so poorly we simply haven't found them in the less than 1% we have excavated.

also consider that much of the land that was then surfaced is now under ocean, and majority of all life that has ever existed has existed in the oceans, where we have never excavated.

[petrairene]

But maybe the new small birds outcompeted the small varieties of pterosaurs so only the large ones remained because flight with feathers and the starting technique by using the hind legs to accelerate limits the size birds can reach.

[DAVIDPETERSC]

Nice presentation. Two overlooked facts: 1) The Tanis (= last day of the Cretaceous) embryo at 5cm tall represents a 40cm (16-inch) tall adult ctenochasmatid... not an azhdarchid. So there was more small pterosaur variety on day zero than discovered so far. 2) Your last point, 'being in the right place at the right time', might hit the closest mark. Vegavis was a latest Cretaceous bird close to the base of all birds... and it lived in temperate Antarctica, away from the worldwide devastation. When you're at the base of all extant birds, you can give rise to all extant birds. Three problems with that idea: 1) secretary birds from Africa gave rise to terror birds from South America. That tells us there was a Cretaceous radiation when the two continents were closer. 2) highly derive Paleocene penguins in New Zealand, far from their flying ancestors, murres of the North Atlantic, = Cretaceous radiation, and 3) Asteriornis maastrichtensis, a latest Cretaceous goose, highly derived relative to Vegavis.

[GMBUGO]

God had to nerf them but he accidentally clicked the “delete” button

[MilesMorales]

You know I never really thought about that question!

[benmcreynolds]

The terror birds on land are definitely some of my favorite types of birds. I can't even imagine how terrified we would have been if we had to deal with those guys running around killing anything they wanted.. They would have been such scary predators just running around wherever they wanted..

[carlosalbuquerque]

This video relies a bit much on birds displacing pterosaurs, which is now thought to be a myth. Sites like the Javelina Formation and Morocco show high diversity of pterosaurs, arguably even taking niches previously occupied by birds. The most likely reason for the extinction of pterosaurs is the fact that they were supreprecocial, much like Mesozoic birds that went extinct.