Are there any dinosaurs alive?
Most dinosaur lineages had died out by the time of the mass extinction that marked the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, 65 million years ago. The few remaining ones were wiped out at that time. Evidence for this is that scientists and lay people have found fossilized teeth, bones, scats, footprints, tooth marks and occasionally even tissues of some of the extinct species in rock layers of known age.

Some scientists think that one group remains: birds! (Just look at the ostrich!) While modern day reptiles are NOT in any way descended from dinosaurs, birds likely are. It is now a generally accepted fact that at least some dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Furthermore, many species of raptor dinosaurs (Velociraptor, Eoraptor) had feathers covering their entire bodies. A bird called Archaeopteryx, which lived in the Jurassic, is a toothed early bird with many dinosaurian characteristics that is thought to be the link between dinosaurs and birds. The wishbone found in all bird species today is also similar in structure to that of theropod dinosaurs.

Thus, one can say the dinosaurs are only sort of extinct. Some people even think that birds are dinosaurs.

Ecologically, birds are not only small to medium-sized flying animals. In the southern continents of South America, Africa, Antarctica and Australia, as well as in New Zealand, giant flightless birds were major predators of herbivorous mammals for a long time after the Cretaceous (until the fauna from Eurasia and North America reached those continents). Some of these birds' relatives are alive today and include the kiwi of New Zealand, the ostrich of Africa, the emu of Australia and the rhea of South America.A komodo dragon is partly a dinosaur aswell.

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