Reading Fill Blank
Parrots are descendants of an ancient line. Due to their great diversity, and since most species
inhabit Africa, Australia, and South America, it seems almost certain that parrots originated
millions of years ago on the ancient southem continent of Gondwana, before it broke up into the
separate southem hemisphere continents we know today. Much of Gondwana comprised vast rainforests
intersected by huge, slow-flowing rivers and expansive lakes, but by eight million years ago, great
changes were underway. The center of the continent of Australia had begun to dry out, and the
rainforests that once covered it gradually contracted to the continental margins, where, to a
limited extent, they still exist today.
The creatures that remained in those shrinking rainforests had to adapt to the drier conditions or
face extinction. Reacting to these desperate circumstances, the parrot family, typically found in
jungles in other parts of the world, has populated some of Australia's harshest environments. The
parrots spread from ancestral forests through eucalypt woodlands to colonies in the central deserts
of Australia, and as a consequence, they diversified into a wide range of species with adaptations
that reflect the many changes animals and plants had to make to survive in these areas.
These influences helped mold keratin, the substance from which breaks are, made into a range of
tools capable of gathering the new food types preferred by various species of parrot. The size of a
parrot's short, blunt beak and the length of that beak's curved upper section are related to the
