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Evolution

An avian explosion

Nature volume 526, pages 516–517 (2015)Cite this article

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The genome sequences of 198 bird species provide an unprecedented combination of breadth and depth of data, and allow the most robust resolution so far of the early evolutionary relationships of modern birds. See Letter p.569

The fossil record offers a compelling narrative of avian evolution. There are few known fossils of modern birds from the Cretaceous period (around 145 million to 66 million years ago), but most major modern-bird lineages are well represented in fossils from the Palaeogene (around 66 million to 23 million years ago). It is suggested that, following the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous that famously wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, birds went through a (geologically) brief recovery followed by an explosive species radiation. But agreement between the fossil record and phylogenetic trees has been conspicuously absent. On page 569 of this issue, Prum et al.1 use genome sequences of 198 bird species spanning the entire radiation of modern birds to build a new phylogeny. The authors' tree resolves the branching order at the origins of modern birds and strongly supports a rapid radiation of major bird lineages soon after the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction.

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Figure 1: A comparison of avian phylogenies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gavin H. Thomas is in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.,

    Gavin H. Thomas

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  1. Gavin H. Thomas
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Correspondence to Gavin H. Thomas.

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Thomas, G. An avian explosion. Nature 526, 516–517 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature15638

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