Evolution of key biological characteristics in dinosaurs and their relatives

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Dinosaurs and their close relatives, including pterosaurs and crocodilians, comprise the reptilian group Archosauria. Archosaurs dominated large terrestrial vertebrate niches throughout most of the Mesozoic, and the modified dinosaurs known as birds account for about 10,000 living species. The biological characteristics of archosaurs must help to explain their success, but many aspects of archosaurian biology can be studied directly only in living birds and crocodilians. For extinct archosaurs, they must be inferred using fossil evidence, comparisons to living animals, and approaches such as biomechanical modelling.