When the asteroid struck the ocean off the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago, a rain of molten glass and flaming rocks spread around the planet. The last day of the dinosaurs that populate childhood imaginations, and adult fascination, didn’t drag things out. They were dead in hours. Maybe minutes.  But some time after the ash settled and the fires went out, a small dinosaur stepped from the wreckage. With feathers and a toothless beak, this dinosaur was already a solid member of the surviving dinosaurs that we call “birds.” More than that, this was a heavy-bodied, stout-limbed bird that was more at home on the ground than in the trees. The kind of bird that can fly, but would really just prefer to walk. It was a Galliformes, the group that contains the modern turkey. And that group was already at least 20 million years old. That’s right. The group that includes the bird on your Thanksgiving plate was around not just before the asteroid fell, but long before Tyrannosaurus rex evolved.  Read more