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Birds are related...to dinosaurs? · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Birds are related to dinosaurs? Written by Tom Collins. This
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  article is being read by an automated voice brought to
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  you by Everlett. Ottawa native and paleontologist Steve Bruceta has
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  a new book out. The Dinosaur Expert's new topic is birds.
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  Brusat who served as an advisor to the movie Jurassic
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  World and is a professor at the University of Edinburgh
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  in Scotland, recently published The Story of Birds. The book
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  discusses the links between the dinosaurs and today's winged creatures. Brusatta,
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  an Ottawa Township High School graduate who is a professional
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  paleontologist and professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland,
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  currently is promoting his book across a US tour. He
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  agreed to a Q and A with Shaw Local. How
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  did a dinosaur expert come to be interested in birds
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  and what spurred you to identify links between the dinosaurs
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  and today's world creatures. When I first became obsessed with
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  fossils as a teenager growing up in Ottawa, it was
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  dinosaurs that hooked my interest. First. I read every book
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  on dinosaurs I could find. I dragged my parents and
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  brothers to the field Museum in Chicago and the Burpie
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  Museum in Rockford. For goodness knows how many times I
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  wanted to see the dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs. I wanted
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  to dig up dinosaurs and study dinosaurs. And I went
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  to college and became a paleontologist. And for my first
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  research project, my mentor in Chicago, Paul Serino, the great
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  dinosaur hunter, gave me the bones of a huge meat
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  eating theropod that he found in Africa. He asked me
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  to figure out what it was. So I learned a
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  lot about theropods and learned to understand that modern birds
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  evolved from theropods much smaller ones. And when I truly
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  understood that today's birds are dinoosaurs, I grew to become
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  enthralled with birds too. Was there a particular species of
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  bird that caught your eye and helped you draw ancestral
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  links to the dinosaurs. I will admit something kind of silly,
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  maybe even seditious. When I was growing up, I didn't
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  like birds very much. In fact, I was kind of
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  afraid of them. I remember a few times that birds
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  got into our house in Ottawa, and by the way
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  I reacted, you would think it was a wolverine in
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  the house. I ran into my room and shut the
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  door and didn't come out until the bird was gone.
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  There was just something about the flapping wings that spooked me,
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  the manic energy. I'm better now, though, because I've gotten
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  so see so many cool birds around the world, and
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  study so many bird fossils too, and I've come to
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  appreciate birds as incredible feats of nature. These are animals
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  that can do that thing humans have long dreamed to
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  break the bonds of Earth and defy gravity and fly,
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  and they totally transform their bodies to do so. They
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  have feathers and wings and light bones that make an
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  incredible flying machine. They grow super fast and are warm
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  blooded and very smart, and they inherited all of these
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  things from dinosaurs. They are real, true living dinosaurs, and
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  I don't think we appreciate that awesome fact enough. Without
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  giving away any spoilers, we do want people to read
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  the book for themselves. What new fact seems to be
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  gaining the most interest among your readers and at your presentations.
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  I've written a few books before, but this is the
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  first time I am doing a book tour in the US,
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  and it's been a lot of fun. I've been in Washington,
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  d C. Seattle, Bozeman, Montana, and now I'm writing you
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  from Saint Louis, where my parents have come over to
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  see me, and I'll then go to Boston and then
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  back home to Scotland. What I've gathered from audiences so
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  far is two particular areas of fascination. First, this basic
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  but profound idea that today's birds are dinosaurs. It still
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  hasn't really percolated into the pop culture. But birds are
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  dinosaurs in the same way bats are mammals. They are
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  just strange dinosaurs that developed wings and started to fly,
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  and they are the only ones that live on today. Sure,
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  a bird doesn't look at all like a t rex
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  or brontosaurus. Dinosaurs were very diverse, there were many different groups.
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  Bats don't look anything like an elephant or horse or monkey,
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  but they are still mammals. The second thing is that
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  there are so many fantastic extinct birds, birds that once
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  thrived but then died out, and only their fossils remain.
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  There were terror birds taller than humans with heads the
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  size of a horse's head capped with a hooked beak,
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  which were the top predators in South America for tens
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  of millions of years. There were elephant birds in Madagascar
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  that lived up to their name. They weighed over fifteine
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  hundred pounds and laid eggs the size of watermelons. There
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  were demon ducks in Australia that were like one hundred
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  times the size of a modern duck. There were giant
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  soaring birds that once sailed the world's thermal wings on
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  wingspans twenty feet wide. And I could go on and
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  on looking at the world around us. Today we wouldn't
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  know these birds ever existed. What was the reaction from
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  your colleagues and your readers when you discussed your research?
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  Were people surprised or maybe even skeptical of links between
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  dinosaurs and birds? In the scientific community, there is no
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  debate birds are dinosaurs. They evolved from dinosaurs. They are
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  part of the dinosaur family tree. This idea is not
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  a new one proclaimed by brazen young scientists. No, it
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  goes back to the eighteen sixties, the time of Charles Darwin,
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  when scientists of the time recognized how similar the skeletons
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  of birds and dinosaurs were in many aspects. Have you
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  ever looked at a chicken foot? It has scales it
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  has three main toes with claws. It looks like a
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  mini t rex foot. So scientists have suspected this for
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  a long time, and more recently the discovery of feathers
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  on dinosaur fossils proved it, as did DNA evidence. You
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  can use the DNA like a paternity test to build
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  family trees, and it shows that birds are embedded within
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  the reptile family tree. They are actually more closely related
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  to crocodiles than crocodiles are to lizards and snakes. So
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  there is no controversy among scientists, but among the public. Yeah,
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  the idea is still a weird one for many people,
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  and I hope the book can play a role in
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  changing that. If someone were to invent time travel tomorrow
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  and we could visit the age of dinosaurs, would we
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  recognize any of the airborne creatures, or would the bird's
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  ancestors be unrecognizable to modern eyes? It would be incredible.
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  At the moment t Rex was rampaging across the American
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  West about sixty six million years ago, there would have
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  been a whole menagerie of birds flying, fluttering, flapping, gliding
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  and soaring overhead. Many of these were primitive birds. They
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  still had the sharp teeth and killer claws and long
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  tails of their raptor dinosaur ancestors, but others were much
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  more modern. They had beaks and light skeletons, and grew
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  super fast and were warm blooded. There were true members
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  of the duck and chicken group living with t Rex.
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  How cool is that? What has been the reaction been
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  so far promoting your book? So far, so good. It
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  has been a thrill meeting a lot of new people,
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  especially young people interested in science and signing the book.
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  I'll tell you signing books never gets old. When I
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  was a kid, I voraciously collected autographs from baseball players
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  and politicians and other famous people, and I still do.
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  I still ask writers to sign books for me, and
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  athletes to sign memorabilia if I meet them, and I'm
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  signing books for people for kids. It still blows my mind,
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  and I am forever grateful, and especially for my family
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  and my teachers at Wallace Grade School in Ottawa Township
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  High School, who supported me fostered this weird love of
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  dinosaurs and fossils that I developed as a teenager, and
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  that is why I dedicated this book to my parents,
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  Jim and Roxanne Brussette, longtime Ottawa Natives. Wonderful people, my heroes,