When Did Modern Birds Evolve?

The ancient bird ancestor Archaeopteryx was followed by several other early types of bird. Another early bird was the diver-like bird, Hesperornis which also had teeth. Some of the fossils from the period show birds that looked a bit like cormorants and flamingos. More recent fossils look a lot like modern birds many of their adaptations seem to have evolved at least two million years ago.

In fact, the basic body structure of birds has changed surprisingly little in the last hundred and thirty million years. This lack of change shows that the adaptation of flight that birds made very early on was a great survival advantage. Previously, flight had only been used by insects and by a few primitive gliding reptiles. When birds evolved flight, they moved into a whole new ecological arena where competition from other animals was virtually zero. They took advantage of this and have developed to produce thousands of different species.

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