The order Falconiformes () is represented by the extant family Falconidae (falcons and caracaras) and a handful of enigmatic

Paleogene The Paleogene ( ; British English, also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period, geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period million yea ...

species. Traditionally, the other bird of prey families Cathartidae (New World vultures and condors), Sagittariidae (secretarybird), Pandionidae (ospreys), Accipitridae (hawks) were classified in Falconiformes. A variety of comparative genome analysis published since 2008, however, found that falcons are part of a clade of birds called

Australaves Australaves is a recently defined clade of birds, consisting of the Eufalconimorphae (passerines, parrots and falcons) as well as the Cariamiformes (including seriemas and the extinct "terror birds").Prum, R.O. ''et al''. (2015A comprehensive ph ...

, which also includes seriemas, parrots and passerines. Within Australaves falcons are more closely related to the parrot-passerine clade ( Psittacopasserae), which together they form the clade Eufalconimorphae. The

hawk Hawks are bird of prey, birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. They are widely distributed and are found on all continents except Antarctica. * The subfamily Accipitrinae includes goshawks, sparrowhawks, sharp-shinned hawks and others. Th ...

s and vultures occupy a basal branch in the clade Afroaves in their own clade Accipitrimorphae, closer to owls and woodpeckers. See below cladogram of Telluraves relationships based on Braun & Kimball (2021): The fossil record of Falconiformes ''

sensu stricto ''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular co ...

'' is poorly documented. The only stem-falcon that has mostly complete remains is ''

Masillaraptor parvunguis ''Masillaraptor'' is an extinct genus of masillaraptorid, a groups basal falconiforms, from the Middle Eocene Messel Pit, Germany. It is a long-legged relative of the living falcons. Known species Only one species of ''Masillaraptor'' is know ...

'', while the other taxa '' Stintonornis mitchelli'' and '' Parvulivenator watteli'' are known from fragmentary remains. Mayr (2009) noted the similarity of ''Masillaraptor'' to the seriemas. One study from Wang et al. (2012) using 30 nuclear loci from 28 taxa found Falconidae and Cariamidae being sister taxa to each other. This is, however, not been supported by the latest major neoavian phylogenetic studies. A 2022 study recovers massilaraptorids as true falcons.

References

Bird orders Eocene taxonomic orders Oligocene taxonomic orders Miocene taxonomic orders Pliocene taxonomic orders Pleistocene taxonomic orders Holocene taxonomic orders {{Bird-stub