The Story of Birds isn’t just a book about modern birds but how birds came into being, narrated through a paleontologist’s lens. Brusatte blends his own field experiences with decades of research - from both fossil records and modern bird studies - to trace the full evolutionary journey from dinosaurs to birds. And it seems the journey hasn’t ended yet. While the dinosaurs, the great icons of extinction, may have ended when a six-mile-wide asteroid fell from the sky sixty-six million year ago, their evolutionary journey hasn’t finished. The past isn’t completely past.
This is well-paced and highly engaging book on the evolution of birds - from their dinosaur origins all the way to the crows we encounter today. It takes us through an anatomical exploration that makes birds unique. For instance, most people who consume chickens, an estimated 65 billion each year, know little about what they end-up dismembering – a bird or actually a dinosaur. Such is the glorious and miraculous presence of birds which diversified and spread across the globe far outpacing mammals during the post-extinction period.
The dinosaur-bird connection is much simpler to understand. Birds evolved from dinosaur ancestors, and in a genealogical sense are direct descendants, and part of the dinosaur family tree. As scientists classify species by ancestry, Brusatte connects birds with dinosaurs in the same way. Many of the signature features of dinosaur are intact in birds. These can be called by any other name, but birds cannot escape the DNA of their family bloodline. From feathers to wings to big brains and high wire metabolism are infect dinosaur features that birds inherited from their ancestors. With such features, the birds will persist even if the Age of Humans does not.
Birds are smart and certain types like parrots are some of the smartest creatures on earth. They do more with such small brains as compared with mammal species. Brusatte compares neurons in a bird’s brain with other computer devices: “Birds have more cognitive power than mammals. Their computer chips may be small, but they have crammed more transistors onto them, and those transistors are more efficient”. Neurons in birds use three times less energy than mammal neurons, perhaps because bird neurons are crowded so tightly that they can more easily communicate with each other. Much has to be learnt about distinct anatomical features of no less than 10 thousand species of birds, which gets them unique strength to fight adversities.
Birds are elegant survivors. They were the only dinosaurs to have endured the asteroid. They navigated global warming, ice age, volcanic eruptions, and fluctuating seas. Because they carry inside them dinosaur DNA, the genes of their ancestors suffered even worse natural calamities. Some birds, notably bald eagle and kiwis, have put their survival instinct to good use. Brusatte concludes that birds are often the first to sense the danger and prepare to counter it. This book is about the history of bird evolution and how it related to dinosaurs.
The Story of Birds provide definitive evidence that the age of dinosaurs hasn’t truly ended, it has just undergone a rebranding. It is a fascinating, informative and well written book that opens our eyes to the incredible evolutionary journey of birds. Brusatte has a gift for making paleontological history feel accessible and exciting. The author clearly has so much love for his subject matter that the reader can’t help but be captivated. Although written in accessible layman language, it's meticulously annotated, and the chapter notes are likely worth the price of the book.
Birds are the inheritors of 150 million years of evolution, real true dinosaurs, some of the most remarkable creatures that have ever lived. The Story of Birds is an absolutely beautiful experience that leaves with an incredible appreciation for the feathered dinosaurs that live with us.
by Steve Brusatte
Picador/MacMillan, New Delhi
Extent: 435, Price: Rs. 899.
First published in Deccan Herald
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