[PHOTO] From birds to dinosaurs at the AMNH (@amnh)

[rfmcdonald]

One thing that the American Museum of Natural History did quite well was have a whole room dedicated to explaining the profound links between dinosaurs and contemporary birds. If you look around at the fossils they had on display, of giant birds like Diatryma gigantea and dinosaur-era birds like Hesperornis regalis and beautiful impressions of Archaeopteryx, and then you look up to see towering over you the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex that clearly is built along the same lines as the fossils you have just seen, it's almost impossible to imagine there was a time when people did not understand that birds were modern-day dinosaurs.