A giant Yale-led genomic analysis of 198 species of birds has almost completely filled in the avian tree of life.
The new research provides insight into how modern birds evolved from the original three dinosaur lineages that survived the great extinction event over 66 million years ago, Yale University reported.
"This represents the beginning of the end of avian phylogeny," said Rick Prum, the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and senior author of the Nature paper. "In the next five or 10 years, we will have finished the tree of life for birds."
In the past few decades the historical origins of ostriches, emus, ducks, and chickens have come to light. Despite these huge findings, the evolutionary history of 90 percent of contemporary birds in the Neoaves group has remained a mystery. Early ancestors of thousands of these species are believed to have evolved suddenly and rapidly a few million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
These new findings uncovered complicated relationships between birds in the Neoaves group. For example, besides ducks and cranes most of the world's water birds are closely related, suggesting the moved across the globe in "aquatic niches" following the extinction of the dinosaurs instead of evolving from multiple lineages as was previously believed. Another discovery showed hummingbirds likely developed from nocturnal bird species, and the ancient ancestor of the innocuous cardinal and woodpecker was actually a ferocious predatory bird.
"Once we have the complete tree, we can start to study the patterns and processes that have given rise to all the amazing diversity of living birds. That's when the fun really begins," Prum concluded.
