Birds Survived Asteroid Because They Could Eat Seeds During Nuclear Winter

What was said

"Modern-style birds not only could fly, not only were they small, but they grew super fast and reproduced really quickly. That would help. The generations could turn over quickly and they had beaks. These were some of the birds that had beaks and those beaks were very good at eating seeds. And that might sound trivial. But today, when there's a forest fire, when a volcano obliterates an island, plants will grow back. And why is that? Because seeds can last a long time. If you were an animal at the end of the Cretaceous and you ate parts of a growing plant, leaves, flowers, fruits, roots, your food would run out really quickly. But if you could eat seeds, that would be your ticket for surviving longer."

Of all the diverse bird species living at the end of the Cretaceous, only modern beaked birds survived the asteroid impact because their beaks allowed them to eat seeds—the last food source available during the nuclear winter when living plants died. Combined with small size, flight ability, and rapid reproduction, seed-eating gave them the winning evolutionary hand during Earth's most catastrophic period.