|
Avifauna
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the bee hummingbird to the common ostrich. There are over 11,000 living species and they are split into 44 orders. More than half are passerine or "perching" birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palaeognathae
Palaeognathae (; ) is an infraclass of birds, called paleognaths or palaeognaths, within the class Aves of the clade Archosauria. It is one of the two extant taxon, extant infraclasses of birds, the other being Neognathae, both of which form Neornithes. Palaeognathae contains five extant order (biology), orders consisting of four flightless bird, flightless lineages (plus two that are extinct), termed ratites, and one flying lineage, the Neotropic tinamous. There are 47 species of tinamous, five of Kiwi (bird), kiwis (''Apteryx''), three of cassowary, cassowaries (''Casuarius''), one of emus (''Dromaius'') (another became extinct in historic times), two of Rhea (bird), rheas (''Rhea'') and two of ostriches (''Struthio'').Clements, J. C. ''et al''. (2010) Recent research has indicated that paleognaths are monophyletic but the traditional taxonomic split between flightless and flighted forms is incorrect; tinamous are within the ratite radiation, meaning flightlessness arose indepe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shoebill
The shoebill (''Balaeniceps rex''), also known as the whale-headed stork, and shoe-billed stork, is a large long-legged wading bird. It derives its name from its enormous shoe-shaped bill. It has a somewhat stork-like overall form and has previously been classified with the storks in the order Ciconiiformes based on this morphology. However, genetic evidence places it with pelicans and herons in the Pelecaniformes. The adult is mainly grey while the juveniles are more brown. It lives in tropical East Africa in large swamps from South Sudan to Zambia. Taxonomy The shoebill may have been known to Ancient Egyptians but was not classified until the 19th century, after skins and eventually live specimens were brought to Europe. John Gould very briefly described it in 1850 from the skin of a specimen collected on the upper White Nile by the English traveller Mansfield Parkyns. Gould provided a more detailed description in the following year. He placed the species in its own genus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grey Heron
The grey heron (''Ardea cinerea'') is a long-legged wading bird of the heron family, Ardeidae, native throughout temperate Europe and Asia, and also parts of Africa. It is resident in much of its range, but some populations from the more northern parts migrate southwards in autumn. A bird of wetland areas, it can be seen around lakes, rivers, ponds, marshes and on the sea coast. It feeds mostly on aquatic creatures which it catches after standing stationary beside or in the water, or stalking its prey through the shallows. Standing up to tall, adults weigh from . They have a white head and neck with a broad black stripe that extends from the eye to the black crest. The body and wings are grey above and the underparts are greyish-white, with some black on the flanks. The long, sharply pointed beak is pinkish-yellow and the legs are brown. The birds breed colonially in spring in heronries, usually building their nests high in trees. A clutch of usually three to five bluish-gre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maastrichtian
The Maastrichtian ( ) is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) geologic timescale, the latest age (geology), age (uppermost stage (stratigraphy), stage) of the Late Cretaceous epoch (geology), Epoch or Upper Cretaceous series (stratigraphy), Series, the Cretaceous geologic period, Period or system (stratigraphy), System, and of the Mesozoic geologic era, Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from . The Maastrichtian was preceded by the Campanian and succeeded by the Danian (part of the Paleogene and Paleocene). It is named after the city of Maastricht, the capital and largest city of the Limburg (Netherlands), Limburg province in the Netherlands. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (formerly known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary period, Tertiary extinction event) occurred at the end of this age. In this extinction event, mass extinction, many commonly recognized groups such as non-avian dinosaurs, plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, as well as many other lesser-kn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Flamingo
The American flamingo (''Phoenicopterus ruber'') is a large species of flamingo native to the West Indies, northern South America (including the Galápagos Islands) and the Yucatán Peninsula. It is closely related to the greater flamingo and Chilean flamingo, and was formerly considered conspecific with the greater flamingo, but that treatment is now widely viewed (e.g. by the American and British Ornithologists' Unions) as incorrect due to a lack of evidence. It is also known as the Caribbean flamingo, although it is also present in the Galápagos Islands. It is the only flamingo that naturally inhabits North America along with the Neotropical realm. It is a cultural icon for the U.S. state of Florida, where it was formerly abundant in the southernmost regions, although it was largely extirpated by 1900 and is now only an uncommon visitor with a few small, potential resident populations. Taxonomy The American flamingo was formally described in 1758 by the Swedish naturalis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Friedrich Gadow
Hans Friedrich Gadow (8 March 1855 – 16 May 1928) was a Germany, German-born ornithologist who worked in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Britain. His work on the classification of birds based on anatomical and morphological characters was influential and made use of by Alexander Wetmore in his classification of North American birds. Gadow was born in Stary Kraków (Pomerania), the son of an inspector of the Prussian royal forests. He studied at the universities of Berlin, Jena and Heidelberg. At Jena he studied under Ernst Haeckel and at Heidelberg University under the anatomist Carl Gegenbaur. After graduation he travelled to the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum in London in 1880 at the request of Albert Günther, to work on the museum's ''Catalogue of Birds''. Gadow also established the first new sequence of bird orders and families that departed from earlier works in being based on phylogenetic principles based on a comparison of anatomical a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neoaves
Neoaves is a clade that consists of all modern bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...s (Neornithes or Aves) with the exception of Palaeognathae (ratites and kin) and Galloanserae (ducks, chickens and kin). This group is defined in the '' PhyloCode'' by George Sangster and colleagues in 2022 as "the most inclusive crown clade containing '' Passer domesticus'', but not '' Gallus gallus''". Almost 95% of the roughly 10,000 known species of extant birds belong to the Neoaves. The early diversification of the various neoavian groups occurred very rapidly around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and attempts to resolve their relationships with each other have resulted initially in much controversy. Phylogeny The early diversification of the various neoavia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pangalloanserae
Pangalloanserae is a clade of birds defined in a 2001 study by Jacques Gauthier and Kevin de Queiroz as "most inclusive clade containing Galloanserae but not Neoaves Neoaves is a clade that consists of all modern bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard ...". It contains crown Galloanserae as well as all stem-galloanserans. References {{Taxonbar, from=Q88077133 Neognathae Extant Maastrichtian first appearances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neognathae
Neognathae (; ) is an infraclass of birds, called neognaths, within the class Aves of the clade Archosauria. Neognathae includes the majority of living birds; the exceptions being the tinamous and the flightless ratites, which belong instead to the sister taxon Palaeognathae. There are nearly 10,000 living species of neognaths. The earliest fossils are known from the very end of the Cretaceous with the oldest known members being ''Teviornis'' and ''Vegavis'', but molecular clocks suggest that neognaths originated sometime in the first half of the Late Cretaceous, about 90 million years ago. Since then, they have undergone adaptive radiation, producing the diversity of form, function, and behavior that exists today. Neognathae includes the order (biology), order Passeriformes (perching birds), one of the largest orders of land vertebrates, containing some 60% of living birds. Passeriformes is twice as species-rich as Rodentia and about five times as species-rich as bat, Chiroptera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notopalaeognathae
Notopalaeognathae is a clade that contains the order Rheiformes (rheas), the clade Novaeratitae (which includes the cassowaries and emus, the kiwis, and the extinct elephant birds), and the clade Dinocrypturi (comprising the tinamous and the extinct moas). Notopalaeognathae was named by Yuri ''et al.'' (2013) and defined in the '' PhyloCode'' by Sangster ''et al.'' (2022) as "the least inclusive crown clade containing '' Rhea americana'', '' Tinamus major'', and '' Apteryx australis''". The exact relationships of this group, including its recently extinct members, have only recently been uncovered. The two lineages endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ... to New Zealand, the kiwis and the extinct moas, are not each other's closest relatives: the moas are mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Struthioniformes
Struthioniformes is an order of birds with only a single extant family, Struthionidae, containing the ostriches. Several other extinct families are known, spanning across the Northern Hemisphere, from the Early Eocene to the early Pliocene, including a variety of flightless forms like the Paleotidae, Geranoididae, Eogruidae and Ergilornithidae, the latter two thought to be closely related to Struthionidae. Evolutionary history According to Mayr and Zelenkov (2021), all Struthioniformes are united by the following characters: "a very long and narrow tarsometatarsus with short trochleae for the second and fourth toes, a tubercle next to the pons supratendineus on the distal end of the tibiotarsus, as well as a shortening of all non-ungual phalanges of the fourth toe except for the proximal one" All known members of the group are thought to have been flightless. Struthioniformes were widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere during the Eocene, including Paleotididae fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clade
In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach to taxonomy adopted by most biological fields. The common ancestor may be an individual, a population, or a species (extinct or Extant taxon, extant). Clades are nested, one in another, as each branch in turn splits into smaller branches. These splits reflect evolutionary history as populations diverged and evolved independently. Clades are termed ''monophyletic'' (Greek: "one clan") groups. Over the last few decades, the cladistic approach has revolutionized biological classification and revealed surprising evolutionary relationships among organisms. Increasingly, taxonomists try to avoid naming Taxon, taxa that are not clades; that is, taxa that are not Monophyly, monophyletic. Some of the relationships between organisms that the molecul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
