@Intrusion498
Azdharchids is what happens when you mix a great blue heron and a frickin giraffe
@qwertyuiop1st
I expect that there were some species that survived the extinction event itself and maybe even the ecological fluctuations afterwards, but just didn't make it very far into the Eocene. A sort of "almost, but not quite".
@posticusmaximus1739
I think the biggest factor was small size and "scraps" diet, i.e. seeds, general omnivory. Although plants were hit hards, there were lots of seeds around that big pterosaurs couldn't eat.
@yissibiiyte
By the end of the Cretaceous all pterosaurs were too massive to survive an extinction. Most birds went extinct too, with only small ones surviving. If there were small pterosaurs around at the time they could have possibly survived.
@mhdfrb9971
Vast majority of birds also went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous - a current hypothesis is that the handful of surviving Neornithean lineages were all small [ground-foraging seed-eaters] from which all modern birds evolved. Terrestrial granivory seems to have been the only bird-niche that remained viable in the immediate aftermath of the impact. There were no small ground-foraging seed-eating pterosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous. They were a mix of medium-to-giant carnivores, piscivores and possibly frugivores. Sucked to be them. Also, for the saying that birds outcompeted small pterosaurs, birds appeared million of years before pterosaurs went in to decline. Its more likely the smaller pterosaurs were outcompeted by the young of larger pterosaurs which were doing pretty well. There's a huge amount of preservational bias when it comes to pterosaur fossils. I once found an article that said the presence of large pterosaurs stopped early birds getting much larger, and it was the small size of these birds that enabled them to survive the extinction event.
@Travluminatii
They all flew to the moon
@rboss5919
Thumbnail just has me imagining a flock of prehistoric seagulls harassing a pterasaur for the fish it caught.
@NLance
I was waiting for it but I noticed a lack of mention of feathers and the wonders of bird feet. Birds had feathers that protected them from the environment at that time as well. They were good at keeping the body cool and warm in unfavorable temperatures. Birds also have feet that are basically bone, modified scaly feathers, skin, and tendons, equipped with close-sitting bloodvessels that exchange heat between the outgoing and incoming veins. Which meant their feet did not freeze in the cold. These adaptations made them way more likely to survive harsh conditions than the fuzzy flying reptiles.
@Headless_Bill
RIP closest things we've gotten to wyverns.
@KAZVorpal
It should be noted that the dominant kind of bird in the Cretaceous were a kind that didn't survive: The enantiornithes. They had branched off from the future modern birds, ornithurines, early on, with a different shoulder structure, more commonly retaining teeth, et cetera. But because they were dominant, enantiornithes occupied the major ecosystems, like trees and forests, while the ornithurines were mostly in small niches like ground/burrow dwelling and water. The dominant birds, therefore, depended on trees and open air for reproduction and shelter, and were wiped out along with those ecosystems, while the semiaquatic and ground dwellers survived. In fact, the surviving birds were a lot like the galliformes (fowl like chickens) and anseriformes (water fowl like ducks). One genus did indeed evolve into galliformes and anseriformes, while others evolved into neoaves (most other birds) and others into the paleognaths (ostriches and emus).
@ezradanger
My 5-year-old asked me this very question yesterday and I did not have a good answer. Here's to hoping I have a good answer by the time I finish the video lol
@cjalexanderjr8811
And this is why only birds without teeth survived the extinction. Toothless birds were able to eat the most available food sources - nuts, seeds and insects.
@Foxtrottangoabc
Birds flew above the astetoid when they saw it heading in fast , they f$#@&d off fast !
@adamb.c.1553
I lack the education, public and self taught, to create my own theories on fascinating topics like these, but I do enjoy trying to build on the theories propounded by minds far greater than my own. It’s in this spirit that I submit the following thought: Perhaps the reason birds survived while the pterosaurs did not boils down to something as simple as the birds’ ability to land and take flight on far smaller surface areas and hide deeper into caves. If we assume that the world was on fire, and toxic weather came in waves, the ability to hide in place AND be nomadic would have made all the difference in survival. I’m not even sure I’m adding anything, and if not, I apologize for wasting the time of every reader lol.
@SoulDelSol
Birds couldnt fill niche fully until big guys got smoked
@jackfelldown1
maybe pterosaurs were intelligent enough to build a spaceship and take off to a different galaxy before the extinction event.
@brandondavidson4085
I just love the idea of a tiny pterosaur. Long before they got so big, just a little leathery guy.
@Eye_Exist
it would be cool to know an estimation of how much of the earth surface have we actually excavated paleontologically and archaeologiclally. because assuming it's something under 1% (both ground and under sea) it means we are missing almost all of the data, meaning the dots we have are by all means so few we likely have entirely wrong picture. to the dinosaur question this implies that a) because birds existed there were also bird size land dinosaurs, and b) because birds survived the similar sized land dinosaurs also survived for possibly few million years and we just don't know it because the small skeletons fossilize so poorly we simply haven't found them in the less than 1% we have excavated. also consider that much of the land that was then surfaced is now under ocean, and majority of all life that has ever existed has existed in the oceans, where we have never excavated.
@mattthompson6281
I still think it’s weird that even the smallest of Pterosaurs went extinct, while birds survived
@ExtinctZoo