Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.

I'm Ashley Hamer.

And I'm Natalia Reagan.

Today you learn about why birds are the only surviving dinosaurs.

Then we'll talk to Ali Ward of the Ologies podcast

about why we should all ask smart people, stupid questions.

Let's satisfy some

researchers even call your run-of-the-mill dinosaurs.

Some researchers even call your run-of-the-mill dinos, non-avian dinosaurs to keep them distinct

from their modern feathered cousins.

That makes birds the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction that wiped out all the others.

It's hard to believe, right?

I mean, how did ancestral pigeons manage to do what Triceratops couldn't?

Paleontologists think there are a few big reasons.

But first, we have to get a couple things straight.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago

didn't directly send them into extinction.

Sure, it probably took out the unlucky souls that were living where of the giant space rock struck Earth,

near what's now the Yucatan Peninsula.

But it was the huge blanket of dust and the resulting climate change that was really responsible for the Dino's demise.

When the climate changed, so did everything else. Earth became darker and colder, and that drastically reduced the amount of plant life

available to Earth's herbivores. That in turn reduced the amount of meat available to the carnivores.

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