Today, partly owing to this technological revolution, we are living through a major extinction event.

For years, scientists have been sounding the alarm about biodiversity’s dramatic decline in what some have dubbed the world’s sixth mass extinction event.

Birds diversified rapidly shortly after the extinction event, but scientists still aren’t sure exactly when it happened and how it varied among species.

Mammals did not emerge from the extinction event unscathed.

They were wiped out 360m years ago in a mass extinction event but their 90m years of dominance saw them evolve some of the key features of modern vertebrates.