Steve Brusatte

This is The Guardian.

The asteroid came down and the dinosaurs died, but there was one peculiar type of dinosaur that did make it through.

My wife and I were at the Lyme Regis fossil festival and we had a little break and we were sitting by the beach and I was eating a pasty and one of these aerial assassins from the sky came down and stole my pasty.

It was not pleasant.

I was very hungry.

My lunch was gone.

It was just a sad scene.

This is not a turn of phrase.

This is not scientists tweaking the definition of words that you thought you knew so we sound smarter.

This isn't us hinging on some technicality.

It's actually really straightforward.

Today's birds evolved from dinosaurs.

So in that way, the age of dinosaurs actually continues.

Birds are dinosaurs.

And I want people to understand what that means.

They are a strange type of dinosaur that millions of years ago got small, evolved wings, developed the ability to fly.

They are part of the dinosaur family tree.

They are part of the bloodline.

It is a transitional fossil.

It has feathers.