For further context: "dinosaurs" covers a time range MUCH longer than the time since they went extinct, i.e. enough time for almost all mammals and modern birds and darn near everything you can see today except crocodiles and horseshoe crabs to evolve.
There was a large variety. An extremely large variety. As much as we are understandably excited about feathers being a thing that we didn't realize earlier, in 100+ million years a lot of things evolve. They didn't all have feathers.
> enough time for almost all mammals and modern birds and darn near everything you can see today except crocodiles and horseshoe crabs to evolve.
I know what you're trying to say, but every living thing today, from the mammals to the fungus among us, have spent the same amount of time evolving, dating back to the first life, or at least the first life encoded for reproduction. Except for the birds, the dinosaurs quit early.
Whales evolved from small land mammals since about 50 million years (half the time since dinosaurs) (it took them more like 20 million, but I'm being generous because whales still exist).
100 million years is an extremely long time. A lot happens in that amount of time.
> 100 million years is an extremely long time. A lot happens in that amount of time.
during that period of time, the ancestors of every living thing on earth was also mutating and naturally selecting.
during the entire time the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the mammals and/or their ancestors were also evolving and saving up genetic endowment for being the fittest in every eventuality; sadly, the dinosaurs bet on the wrong ... horses.
The big famous ones got toasted, but one[1] of the small specie survived. A few decades ago, we realized that birds are the descendant of dinosaurs. (Or "birds are dinosaurs" if you prefer that classification.)
[1] One specie or a few species? I'm really curious about the current most popular hypothesis.
There was a large variety. An extremely large variety. As much as we are understandably excited about feathers being a thing that we didn't realize earlier, in 100+ million years a lot of things evolve. They didn't all have feathers.