On November 12 Jake Berv gave the Larry King Memorial Lecture to a sold out audience at the Rochester Academy of Sciences Fall Paper Session, held at Roberts Wesleyan College. Jake’s lecture, entitled, “Surviving the Mass Extinction: The Amazing Story of Bird Recovery and Radiation after the End-Cretaceous Catastrophe” focused on bird evolution after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction that marked the end of the non-avian dinosaurs; only a few lineages of the Neornithes— today’s birds—survived. In three parts, Jake discussed the phylogenetic context required to understand bird evolution, the explosive diversification of modern birds in the aftermath of the K/Pg, and controversies surrounding the timescale of modern bird evolution. 
