Which avian species are most closely related

These dinosaurs were only distantly related to modern snakes, lizards, and turtles, groups that had split off at different times. But 65 million years ago there was a massive extinction event, and all dinosaurs were killed except for a single group of feathered dinosaurs. These evolved over the next 65 million years into modern birds. For centuries, many scientists hypothesized that birds were reptiles due to similarities in their anatomy, but there was no hard fossil evidence to support it.

Since then, many fossils of feathered dinosaurs have been found. Although the living reptiles birds are most closely related to are crocodilians archosaurs , when it comes to their relation to dinosaurs, birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs. These theropods share over traits with modern birds.

Here are a few:. Of course, not all theropod dinosaurs could fly—can you imagine a flying Tyrannosaurus rex?! It is thought that feathers were originally used for mating displays, and modern birds still use them for that today. As mentioned above, a mass extinction event 65 million years ago caused rapid global events like tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.

Thus, the beautiful Australian fairy wrens are not related to our wrens at all, the nuthatch-like sittellas and tree-creepers are not related to nuthatches and creepers, and the red- and yellow-breasted Australian robins are not even thrushes. In fact, all share more recent common ancestors with crows and shrikes than with their American and Eurasian namesakes. Interestingly the Australian birds converge in more than appearance. The fairy wrens characteristically cock their tails, and many of their calls are often very wren-like trills.

The sittellas often forage head-downward, and the tree-creepers climb up tree trunks seeking prey under the bark. The robins, however, have a mode of hunting not found in the North American bird fauna. They are "pounce predators," often clinging to the sides of tree trunks 3 to 6 feet high and pouncing on insects on the ground. All in all, the Australian bird convergence is even more spectacular than the convergence of various marsupials with the placental mammals that dominate on all other continents -- after all the mammalian convergence was recognized early on, while the birds fooled biologists until very recently.

Top: Scarlet Robin Petroica multicolor. Left: Brown Tree-creeper Climacteris picumnus. Right: Superb Blue Wren Malurus cyaneus. Closer to home, another problem that long bedeviled ornithologists was the identity of the birds that had colonized the Hawaiian Islands and evolved into the group known as Hawaiian honeycreepers.

Although obviously closely related to one another, the honeycreepers have radiated to fill a wide variety of habitats. Many have evolved remarkably different bills -- some finch-like, some long and down-curved, some parrot-like, etc.

Comparisons of honeycreeper DNA with that of other groups has confirmed the suspicion of ornithologists that honeycreepers are most closely related to the cardueline finches: goldfinches, crossbills, grosbeaks, siskins, etc. Sibley and Ahlquist estimate that an ancestral finch reached the Hawaiian area some million years ago -- long before the current islands emerged from the sea.

That finch colonized one of the pre-Hawaiian islands that has long since been worn away by the sea. That island was produced by the same volcanic "hot spot" that has been producing the present group. At BGI, the Chinese organization that sequenced the original 48 genomes, more bird genomes have been sequenced and are waiting to be analyzed, according to a report in Science. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.

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