CRET 'MODERN' AVES

["D.W.Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

> The dificulty in answering this has been the identification of many Mesozoic
> birds.  In older books you can find many Mesozoic fossils assigned to living
> orders like Phoenicopteriformes or Anseriformes. 

And even owls (bradycnemids - now troodonts), cormorants, the caegnagnathiform
ratites (now oviraptorosaurs) and various herons, pelicans and so on. All
relegated elsewhere nowadays..

Does anyone know where _Gallornis_ (as Ron notes, long seen as a Cret
'flamingo') belongs nowadays?

Re 'modern' bird orders present in the Cretaceous, are cimolopterygids still
regarded unanimously as charadriiforms? Anyone know? I wonder as some palaeo-
ornithologists lump all late K - early T shorebirds in a paraphyletic 'basal
shorebird' assemblage.

"As everyone knows, carbon is required to make physicists"
!!**??!

DARREN NAISH