According to a new study carried out by Yale University researchers, led by Dr Nicholas Longrich, the catastrophic meteorite impact that apparently coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years back, also affected many of the early bird species.

As per the researchers, the colossal meteorite hit not only annihilated the dinosaurs but also wiped out the earliest birds. Though the meteorite impact led to a rapid decline in primitive bird species, the few bird groups that lived through the mass extermination were apparently the ascendants of all species of modern birds.

To arrive at the conclusions of the study – recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -, the researchers analyzed the fragmentary bird fossils that had been collected up to 100 years back, from diverse locations across North America.

Even though most fossil deposits supposedly date from the last 1.5 million years of the Cretaceous period, researchers have pointed out that a more accurate dating actually places the bird fossils to within 300,000 years of the mass extinction episode – thereby marking a fairly short period on ecological timescales.

Noting that the re-analysis and re-classification of the vital fossil fragments of early bird species have revealed that the asteroid annihilation was a blow to “a much wider range of things” than earlier perceived, Longrich said that further research would probably highlight “many things getting completely hammered by this extinction”!