Following von Mayer’s discovery, scientists began to consider that dinosaurs — specifically theropods, bipedal dinosaurs that evolved during the Late Triassic about 230 million years ago — might be the ancestors of birds. Paleontology: Theropod Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds is a five-lesson course teaching a comprehensive overview of the origins of birds. Dinosaur - Dinosaur - Theropoda: This group includes all the known carnivorous dinosaurs as well as the birds.

No obviously adapted herbivores are recognized in the group, but some theropods, notably the toothless oviraptorids and ornithomimids, may well have been relatively omnivorous like today’s ostriches.

That cute little bird outside your window didn’t descend directly from a T. rex, though. Ceratosaurs were the first and ranged in size from the small Coelophysis to Ceratosaurus , which approached Allosaurus in size. Birds evolved from a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods. The ancestors of the birds were smaller theropods that, like other theropods, had hollow bones and three-toed limbs. Paleontology: Theropod Dinosaurs and the Origin of Birds is a five-lesson course teaching a comprehensive overview of the origins of birds.

Students explore various hypotheses for the origin of flight. The fossil record indicates birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs 200 to 150 million years ago, and the earliest known bird is the late Jurassic Archaeopteryx. Researchers at Oregon State University contend they have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs. This course examines the anatomy, diversity, and evolution of theropod dinosaurs in relation to the origin of birds. Numerous finds in recent years have seemed to support the hypothesis that birds descended from two-legged, running dinosaurs called theropods.
The lungs of theropod dinosaurs (carnivores that walked on two legs and had bird-like feet) likely pumped air into hollow sacs in their skeletons, as is the case in birds. "What was once formally considered unique to birds was present in some form in the ancestors of birds", O'Connor said. Offered by University of Alberta. Birds are not related to dinosaurs because birds are dinosaurs. Today, it’s widely accepted that all of the two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs known as theropods— including T. rex and Albertosaurus—had at least very simple fuzzy feathers covering their bodies.

Modern birds are descended from a group of two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods, a family that includes the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex as well as its smaller, more bird-like cousins, the velociraptors. Discovering fossils of extinct dinosaurs helped scientists figure out that birds are a kind of dinosaur. Offered by University of Alberta. The oldest bird fossils are about 150 million years old. Theropoda (theropod /ˈθɛrəpɒd/; suborder name Theropoda /θɨˈrɒpɵdə/, from Greek meaning "beast feet") is both a suborder of bipedal saurischian dinosaurs, and a clade consisting of that suborder and its descendants (including modern birds).