This is more or less where things stood 66 million years ago. This whole suite of birds and other airborne dinosaurs was there, gliding and flapping overhead, when T. rex and Triceratops were duking it out in North America, carcharodontosaurs were chasing titanosaurs south of the equator, and dwarf dinosaurs were hopping across the islands of Europe. And then they witnessed what came next, the instant that snuffed out almost all of the dinosaurs, all but a few of the most advanced, best-adapted, best-flying birds, which made it through the carnage and are still with us today—among them the
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