Bird
Birds (class Aves) are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. With around 10,000 living species, they are the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. All present species belong to the subclass Neornithes, and inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds emerged within theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 160 million years (Ma) ago. Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma (million years) ago.
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Famous quotes containing the word bird:
“They tell us sometimes that if we had only kept quiet, all these desirable things would have come about of themselves. I am reminded of the Greek clown who, having seen an archer bring down a flying bird, remarked, sagely: “You might have saved your arrow, for the bird would anyway have been killed by the fall.””
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“The bird is lost,
Dead, with all the music:
While sunsets heard the brain’s music
Faded to last horizon notes.”
—Owen Dodson (b. 1914)
“With a broad shoehorn
I am unstuffing a big bird in this dream
Msomebody else’s holiday feast—
and repacking the crop of my own,
knowing it will burst with such
onion, oyster, savory bread crust.”
—Maxine Kumin (b. 1925)