Dinosaurs ruled the world for about 165 million years, towering over most other land animals. They first appeared in the Triassic Period about 250 million years ago and rose to prominence in the Jurassic Period that followed.
But after the six-mile-wide Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth on the northern end of the present-day Yucatan Peninsula, at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 66 million years ago, they went extinct.
Or did they? The truth is, all birds that walk, swim or fly across our planet are technically dinosaurs, descended from giant creatures in the same family as Tyrannosaurus Rex.
“The same way that humans are apes, are the way that birds are dinosaurs,” says Eugenia Gold, a paleontologist at Suffolk University in Boston.
