New paper out on origin of modern avian orders

[Phillip Bigelow <bh162@scn.org>]

Just spotted this while perusing the geology stacks:

Bleiweiss, R. 1998. Fossil gap analysis supports early
   Tertiary origin of trophically diverse avian orders.
   Geology 26(4): 323-326.

It's a stratigraphy paper, folks (ergo, it's presence
in the journal _Geology_).
Bleiweiss disputes the recent (molecular clock) views
of Hedges et al. (1996) and Cooper and Penny (1997)
that most extant birdy orders radiated in the middle
Cretaceous. He studied the Strigiformes, Caprimulgiformes,
and the Apodiformes, and applied the technique
called "gap analysis" to estimate the beginnings
(stratigraphic-beginnings, I should emphasize, which
is problem ridden from the start!) of the
ghost lineages.  His null was that there weren't any
ghost lineages in the orders he studied (or that if
there were, the lineages were short).

His conclusion in a nut-shell:

"Thus the quality of the fossil record is consistent with
the classical view that trophically diverse extant bird
orders arose and diversified rapidly following the widespread
extinction of other terrestrial groups at the K-T boundary."

His confidence level for the probability that these
birds diverged from a common ancestor after the K-T boundary
"exceeded 99%".

I have a few problems with his conclusions (no mention
of Anserformes; no mention of Signor-Lipps Effect, to name
two), but I thought I would bring this paper to the lists
attention.
I suspect that the avian orders that he chose to study
may indeed have radiated after the K-T boundary,
but he left out other modern orders (e.g., Anserformes) that
seem to have an established fossil record in the Latest Cretaceous.

                      <pb>