Here’s how the ancestor of all living birds survived asteroid which killed the dinosaurs

The ancestor of all today’s birds survived the cataclysmic asteroid strike which killed the dinosaurs because it was a quail-like creature which waddled on the ground.

All flying birds died out after the asteroid struck our planet 66 million years ago, causing a global deforestation.

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth at 40 times the speed of sound – causing an explosion seven billion times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb.

Only birds on the ground were able to survive – and they evolved flight again thousands of years later, according to University of Bath researchers.

The researchers analysed the fossil record – looking at the plants that survived after the asteroid wiped out dinosaurs.

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Dr Daniel Field of the University of Bath said, ‘We drew on a variety of approaches to stitch this story together.

‘We concluded that the devastation of forests in the aftermath of the asteroid impact explains why tree-dwelling birds failed to survive across this extinction event.

‘The ancestors of modern tree-dwelling birds did not move into the trees until forests had recovered from the extinction-causing asteroid.’