Set
Category:
Thematic & Topical Coins
Set Name:
Avians-The Dinosaurs Among Us
Set Description:
Few animals have inspired the fascination and awe in us that dinosaurs have. For centuries, even before it was understood what they were, humans have been fascinated by the occasional fossil bones that they found. They incorporated them into their cultural mythologies, with ancient Chinese interpreting fossil dinosaur bones as the bones of dragons to be used in traditional Chinese medicine and Europeans interpreting them as the remains of biblical giants. It was only in the 19th Century that scientists began to understand that these bones were the remains of prehistoric animals that were no longer on the earth. With this understanding, the scientific study of dinosaurs was born.
In the nearly 200 years that have passed since those first realizations about those fossil bones, our understanding of dinosaurs has increased massively. Scientists have gone from viewing dinosaurs as uniformly huge, cold-blooded animals that were similar to traditional reptiles to understanding that dinosaurs are a hugely diverse group of animals with a massive variety of features and forms……yes, that’s right. I said are, not were.
The reason I said are and not were is that in 2014, scientists reported what is arguably the most massive discovery in the whole area of dinosaur research. They reported that dinosaurs are not extinct. They are still here, and there are over 10,000 species of dinosaur still living among us. You probably saw a dinosaur today. Maybe you or a neighbor has one as a pet. Maybe a neighbor has a feeder for wild dinosaurs outside of their house. Likely, at some point, a dinosaur has used your vehicle as a toilet as it sat in your driveway or a parking lot. We call these living dinosaurs “birds”.
Yes, it’s true. Birds are living dinosaurs. Specifically, they are Coelurosaurian Theropod dinosaurs that belong to the clade Maniraptora, a clade of feathered dinosaurs which includes therizinosaurs, dromaeosaurs, alvarezsaurs, oviraptorosaurs and avialans. Birds are members of this last family, the avialans, which were and are all small, feathered theropods who had evolved to take flight and take over the skies. The first fossil avialan discovered was the Archaeopteryx in 1861, which was also the first dinosaur fossil found with preserved feather imprints.
Since the 1960’s, a wealth of new fossils of theropod dinosaurs has increased our understanding of their true nature. While all dinosaurs are considered reptiles, theropod dinosaurs were not and are not animals one would look at and think traditional reptile. Theropods were and are warm-blooded, active creatures and many of them had feathers on at least parts of their bodies. A Tyrannosaurus Rex, one of the most famous prehistoric coelurosaurian theropods, would not have made one think reptile if a human could see a living one. The reaction would likely have been “That is a huge, terrifying bird!” Which is essentially the truth. It’s better to think of Tyrannosaurus as a huge eagle (or maybe as a huge vulture as of 7/23/17-See Peregrine Falcon for details!) rather than something like a huge crocodile or lizard.
As more and more fossils of feathered theropods, small theropods and flying theropods have been discovered, scientists have found over 100 distinctive characteristics which birds share with other theropod dinosaurs, allowing us to discover the true evolutionary heritage of our feathered friends. The interesting thing is how little birds are changed from other theropods. One of the previous scientific views was that birds were a different animal that had evolved from dinosaurs, similar to the way amphibians evolved from fish by acquiring new and novel traits and reptiles evolved from amphibians by a similar process. But this isn't true for avians. On the dinosaur family tree, birds are positioned right in the middle of the theropod branch, not near the outside. For theropods as we understand them now, avians are rather typical coelurosaurs. They didn't evolve any features that were not seen in other dinosaurs, they just use those features in different ways. Most paleontologists now feel that there is no missing link between birds and other dinosaurs. The only difference is that one group survived to the present day and the others did not.
Avians, the proper scientific name for the living dinosaurs, are arguably the most amazing group of dinosaurs. Aside from being on the earth as a distinct family of theropods for over 120 million years, they are some of nature’s ultimate survivors. 66 million years ago, a 6.2-mile-wide asteroid hit the Earth, releasing an amount of energy equal to 10 billion Hiroshima bombs, causing the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event that destroyed 75% of all life that existed at the time. In an instant, the lush, fertile and life-filled Earth was turned into a burned out sphere of death. The sun was blocked by vaporized particles of the Earth's crust and mantle, killing most of the plants and photosynthetic plankton and causing an impact winter which lasted for years. Just imagine it, one minute, everything around you is alive. The fertile, green world is full of the sights and sounds of dinosaurs, insects, crocodilians and small mammals and then, in an instant, there is this huge explosion, followed by a firestorm, then a rapid drop in temperature. All of the sounds and life are just......gone. What is left is a dark, cold, silent and nearly dead world. Everything over 55 pounds is either dead in the initial impact and firestorm or is now starving to death in the post-impact wasteland. I have heard several scientists refer to the last day of the Cretaceous as the single worst day in the history of our planet. It was the worst catastrophe life on Earth has ever faced. An all out nuclear war wouldn't even match up to what happened after this asteroid hit.
In this horrible environment every dinosaur died, probably in a matter of months, except for four avian lineages: the Paleognathae (Ratites and Kin), the Anseriformes (Ducks and Relatives), the Galliformes (Fowl) and the Neoaves (The ancestors of all other extant avians outside of the previous families). We'll likely never know exactly why these four dinosaur lineages survived when every other lineage died but the current theory is that it was only these dinosaurs had the right combination of features to survive in the post-meteor holocaust. This combination was small size, the ability to fly to search for food and beaks, so that they could adapt their feeding strategies easier than toothed dinosaurs could. This allowed the surviving avians to move from herbivory and predatory carnivory to eating seeds and scavenging. This, combined with the lower food needs of the surviving avians compared to many other dinosaurs due to their small size, allowed them to survive until the Earth began to recover. Filling ecological niches left behind by the extinction of the other dinosaurs and the pterosaurs ensured the survival of the four avian lineages into the Paleogene, where they explosively radiated into new forms to fill these empty niches.
Avians have survived the four extinction events that have happened since the end Cretaceous event as well, and many of them seem well-poised to endure the currently occurring Holocene Extinction Event, which is being caused by us, humans. Many avians have actually used our changing of the environment to their advantage, using our buildings for nesting grounds and shelter while using our garbage, bird feeders and other animals which have adapted to life in our settlements as sources of food.
The discovery that birds are living theropod dinosaurs was something of a miracle for me. I’ve been into dinosaurs since I was a child, and I always suspected there was a connection there but I had it backwards. I thought theropod dinosaurs were birds, rather than birds are dinosaurs. Since reading the initial paper in 2014, I find myself staring at chickadees when walking outside and seeing their prehistoric ancestors in an animal that is already severely cool on its own. I got to achieve a dream I’ve had since childhood that I never thought I’d achieve: to see a living dinosaur. It’s been amazing to realize that I see them every day.
I have to close with a warning. Many Theropod dinosaurs were and are some of the most efficient predators this world has ever seen. As this set discusses the behaviors of the animals on the coins, there is violent content pertaining to hunting and defense behaviors. If descriptions of natural violence disturb you, you may not want to check out this set or just look at the coins.
Set Goals:
This set is my home for coins featuring modern dinosaurs, which are actually one of the most
numerous animals on coins. The rules for this set are that it will mostly include avian dinosaurs including extinct birds, but coins featuring non-avian dinosaurs may be included if they help tell the story of how avians evolved and how similar they are to their theropod kin. I’m also going to mostly use modern coins as it is a set for modern dinosaurs. There is another reason for using modern coins as well. The goal of this set is to use coins that display naturalistic depictions of the animals and there are simply very few classic era coins that depict birds realistically and accurately. They are usually depicted in heraldic positions that would break a bird's wings in real life. Even one of the best bird depictions on a classic coin, that on the reverse of the U.S. Peace Silver Dollar, is inaccurate in two important details, namely that the head is shaped incorrectly and the pattern of feathering on the legs is like that found among the eagles of the Aquila genus, not like the leg feathering pattern found on the eagles of the Haliaeetus genus, to which the Bald Eagle belongs. Modern depictions tend to be much better and more accurate. The goal of the set is to acquire as many different species as I can, and to use the coins to talk about the species the coin depicts. I hope this set will be fun and educational.
Owner:
Mohawk
Signature Set Details:
| Dove |
| NGC | |
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| Marabou Stork |
| NGC | |
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| Golden Eagle |
| NGC | |
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| Red Junglefowl |
| NGC | |
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| Bald Eagle |
| NGC | |
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| Great Blue Heron |
| NGC | |
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| Peregrine Falcon |
| NGC | |
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| Anhinga and Roseate Spoonbill |
| NGC | |
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| Puerto Rican Amazon |
| NGC | |
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| Common Loon |
| NGC | |
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| Theories on the Origin of Flight Among Theropod Dinosaurs |
| NGC | |
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| Eastern Meadowlark |
| NGC | |
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| Haast's Eagle |
| NGC | |
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| Wedge-Tailed Eagle |
| NGC | |
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| Barn Owl |
| NGC | |
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| Links to Other Dinosaurs-Nesting Behavior |
| NGC | |
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| A Case of Mistaken Identity |
| NGC | |
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| Shared Features With Other Theropods-Albertosaurus |
| NGC | |
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| Evolutionary Relatives-Archosaurs-Spectacled Caiman |
| NGC | |
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