What A Wonderful World!

What a complex, delightful, surprisingly magical world we are blessed to be a part of. How lucky we are to be sharing space with gazillions of flying ornaments, such as this Blue tailed Bee-eater Merops philippinus.

- Bittu Sahgal

Not an ‘ordinary’ bird, this avian is a miracle; an exaltation of the evolutionary line between the then reptiles and a group of carnivorous dinosaurs called Theropods that existed millions of years before humans were a gleam in evolution’s eye. In fact, every bird is just that… a dinosaur descendent! You see, the dinosaur-journey did not end 65 million years ago. Some dinosaur genes snuck through the holocaust and they live and breathe among us. Look outside your window and you will probably see one chirping away right now!

But let me not hijack your voyage of discovery. Explore. As my grandsons often advise, “Ask Mr. Google” about ‘Archaeopteryx’. Scratch around and you will discover what paleontologists unearthed in the 1860s… that a tiny stem on the robust evolutionary tree-of-life demonstrated that ‘life will find a way’.