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No they aren't. Birds appeared in the fossil record before bird-like dinosaurs did. Parallel evolution. Birds and bird-like dinosaurs share a common ancestor, but dinosaurs didn't "turn into birds." There were already birds.
Ok, I stand corrected. That makes more sense anyways but a large dinosaur sized chicken would make a nice meal.
Actually that's held by a minority, the majority accept that birds ARE descended from maniraptorian dinosaurs. Not parallel or separate. Here's a slightly dated, but still a good basic
intro. In recent years after that page was written, quite a lot of new information and fossils, including those that establish dinosaurs with bird like features(feathers, wishbone, bones in the wrist etc) aged to BEFORE "the first birds".
There's very, very strong support for a dino-bird link. Yes, some don't agree.. however as the intro says:
Some researchers today do not agree that dinosaurs gave rise to birds, and are working to falsify this theory, but so far the evidence for the theory has swamped their efforts.
Indeed. Discovery of many feathered dinosaurs and early bird fossils in last few years have greatly added to the swamping. Liaoning fossil deposits, especially.
