Novaeratitae

Novaeratitae
Portrait of a Southern Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Clade: Notopalaeognathae
Clade: Novaeratitae
Yuri et. al, 2013
Orders

Novaeratitae is a clade that was originally defined to contain the recent common ancestors of the orders Casuariiformes (emus and cassowaries) and Apterygiformes (kiwis).[1][2] Recently it has been determined that the elephant birds of the extinct order Aepyornithiformes were the closest relatives of the kiwis, and therefore are part of this group.<ref name = Mitchell2014">Mitchell, K. J.; Llamas, B.; Soubrier, J.; Rawlence, N. J.; Worthy, T. H.; Wood, J.; Lee, M. S. Y.; Cooper, A. (2014-05-23). "Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution". Science 344 (6186): 898–900. doi:10.1126/science.1251981. PMID 24855267. </ref> The implication is that ratites had lost flight independently in each group, as the elephant birds are the only novaeratites found outside Oceania.<ref name = Mitchell2014">Mitchell, K. J.; Llamas, B.; Soubrier, J.; Rawlence, N. J.; Worthy, T. H.; Wood, J.; Lee, M. S. Y.; Cooper, A. (2014-05-23). "Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution". Science 344 (6186): 898–900. doi:10.1126/science.1251981. PMID 24855267. </ref>

References

  1. Hackett, S.J. et al. (2008) A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History. Science, 320, 1763.
  2. Yuri, T. (2013) Parsimony and model-based analyses of indels in avian nuclear genes reveal congruent and incongruent phylogenetic signals. Biology, 2:419–44.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, January 28, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.