Birds are dinosaurs. This fact is easily understood by looking at the scaly feet of a chickadee or by comparing a chicken wing to a Velociraptor arm. But given that birds are the only “terrible lizards” around today, it’s easy to forget that they also thrived alongside their non-avian kin for 84 million years. The first birds evolved in the Late Jurassic, roundabout 150 million years ago, and they became a widespread and successful branch of the dinosaur family tree.

The trouble is finding those birds. They were often so small and so delicate that their bones didn’t make it into the fossil record in the same abundance as their larger, more robust relatives. And that’s