>>719944942
>What's the deal with dinosaurs and birds anyways? Is a T Rex related to birds in the same way a Lion is related to a housecat

A bird is related to a t.rex in the same way a heron is related to an alligator and in a similar way to how all four of them are vaguely related to each other. Birds, dinosaurs, reptiles, are all branches from the group "Archosaur" with dinosaurs and birds (as we know them) having shared a common ancestor that they split from sooner than other reptiles.

If it makes it make more sense: plenty of perfectly "normal" birds lived during dinosaur times that were analogous to modern day birds. It wasn't like the dinosaurs died out and then birds evolved to replace them (though in the absence of dinosaurs a handful of birds in South and Central America did evolve back into theropod-like terrorbirds).