Talk:Bird evolution
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Helpful link: The Origin and Evolution of Birds, by J. Alan Feduccia.
- Helpful but potentially misleading, as Feduccia's views are considered somewhat fringe science these days. But as regards everything that happened not more than 60 million years ago, he's usually good. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I should note that in the present state the article somewhat undervalues the Cretaceous follsi record. We have found bones that apparently represent everything the less outlandish mol-clock estimates suggest that should be found, except Metaves and nobody knows whether these are not bogus. In many cases these fossils are just single isolated bones. But they are single isolated bones that are too much like Charadriiformes, proto-Procellariiformes, proto-Pelecaniformes, Galloanserae, Charadriiformes, etc to ignore. What is really underrepresented are landbirds, and there is still much debate as to why. Sylvia Hope in 2002 did a nice chapter on the Mesozoic fossil record of modern birds in the Mesozoic Birds monograph. The only drawbacks are that the analyses are qualitative rather than quantitative (which would have been too high a workload possibly), and that she still tries to assign the fossils to modern families. The latter has historically caused much of the confusion hinted at in the article - there is a good and solid record of Mesozoic Charadriiformes for example, but these are quite obviously not Charadriidae if one thinks about it, but exactly that has been claimed. And no matter whether one prefers named ranks or unranked clades, the lower-level taxa are nested with in higher-level taxa in any case. Meaning that Charadriidae evolved out of more basal Charadrii which did not have the unique autapomorphies of Charadriidae. If one looks at it this way, the evolutionary picture is as solid as a Lance Formation siltstone. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Birds prokaryotic?
"However, as with virtually all prokaryotic organisms, bird species are currently going extinct at a far greater rate than any possible speciation or other generation of new species."
Learn something new every day!
Now, this is a typo, right? Sheep81 05:46, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] However, as with virtually all eukaryotic organisms...
However, as with virtually all eukaryotic organisms, bird species are currently going extinct at a far greater rate than any possible speciation or other generation of new species.
I'd like to see some scientific references for this. While I accept that birds and mammals are under intense pressure in many parts of the world, to expand that to cover all eukaryotes, which includes seaweeds, snails, insects, trees, mosses, mushrooms, moulds, flagellate protozoans, nematodes, etc., etc., is going a bit far. I'd have thought that the vast majority of eukaryote species couldn't care less about humans since they don't interact with us at all. Slime moulds and tapeworms will surely be doing whatever they do now a million years from now quite happily. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 20:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
- Removed. There's no need to leave patent nonsense in an article until someone proves it wrong. -- Tim Starling (talk) 17:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sections
A chronological overview would be nice:
- Late Cretaceous - paleognath-neognath split, Galloanserae-Neoaves split (Coronaves-Metaves split is still not supported by robust or material evidence). First modern order-level taxa evolve; if not Coronaves-Metaves, Charadriiformes are probably the oldest Neoaves.
- Paleogene - emergence of the modern orders; some families (and maybe genera), especially of Galloanseres, paleognaths(? evidence is equivocal), possibly Charadriiformes and other "higher waterbirds" evolve. "Higher landbird" radiation starts. Many families that are now extinct. By the end of the Eocene, all living orders presumably existed as distinct lineages (earliest Passeriformes date from the Early Oligocene)
- Neogene - evolution of the living families. By the end of the Miocene, (almost?) all living genera and perhaps a few living species are present.
- Quaternary - almost exclusively microevolution, speciation etc.
Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
