Birds are survivors of the Cretaceous mass extinction event 65 million years ago. That event wiped out the dinosaurs on the earth, and only some of the ancestors of birds survived. New research based on genome data shows that between 10 and 15 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, birds experienced a "superspecies explosion" and later gradually evolved more than 10,000 species known as Neoavians. Birds, 95% of all living birds come from this new class of birds.