Tree of Birds

From this page on you can explore the wonderful variety of birds all over the world. The following pages only contain the modern birds belonging to the clade of Neornithines. On the left you can choose the different groups. There will be no information about the past history of the birds. Starting from the Dinosauria, with some amazing creatures on the way to the present diversity. So no Archeopteryx, Herperornis or Ichtyornis here. But you will discover some other extinct species, that would have walked or flew among us. All the figures are from the Tree of Life project, which uses the most recent phylogeny. (https://www.tolweb.org/)

It is clear now that the modern birds can be divided into two groups, the Palaeognathae and the Neognathae. The first group is the oldest and contains the ratites (walking birds without a keel) and the Tinamoes. The Neognathae comprise the Galloanserae and the Neoaves. These two groups together with the Palaeognathae are surely monophyletic (descending from the same ancestor), but there is still some discussion about their relationships. The traditional view is shown in the figure. Nuclear DNA also confirms this classification. But analyses with mtDNA concluded that the Neoaves were the first group that arise, and with a close relationship between the Palaeognathae and the Galloanserae. But this strange topology is probably due to the wrong choice of an outgroup (crocodiles). But all the analyses confirmed the monophyly of all three major groups.