Found in South America, the hoatzin is a highly distinctive bird and the sole survivor of its lineage. Our study shows that some relationships in the tree of life can only be determined using huge ...

“It’s pretty amazing,” Francis says, adding that he was surprised how “particular clades on the avian tree of life really just light up,” including blackbirds, warblers, and sparrows. The frequent and ...

"Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as 'vegavis,'" said professor Christopher Torres.

The new avian family tree based on whole genomes of 48 bird species representing all 30 neoavian orders and two galloanserae orders and two palaeognathae orders. For more detail, see ref (4 ...

That is, farms tend to “harbor less of the avian tree of life,” he said. Assessing the biodiversity of a given environment was traditionally accomplished by counting the number of species present, ...

But answering the question of where Vegavis lands on the tree of life isn’t just a technical point of discussion between paleontologists. It can help answer a big open question in bird evolution ...

Chief among them: where is Vegavis perched in the bird tree of life?" The new specimen, recovered from the Antarctic Peninsula in 2011, appears set to lay recent skepticism to rest, with the shape ...