Re: AW: 55 million year old parrot found

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

--- Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au> schrieb am So, 18.5.2008:

> Von: Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>
> Betreff: Re: AW: 55 million year old parrot found
> An: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Datum: Sonntag, 18. Mai 2008, 1:09
> >
> http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00777.x
> 
> An ex-parrot from somewhere close to Norway. I wonder if it
> had blue plumage?


Almost certainly not. Blue (and green) only evolved after the cockatoo 
ancestors split from the parakeet/macaw/lorikeet ancestors. But then again, it 
seems to have evolved convergently in the kakapo, after its ancestors diverged 
from those of the Kaka and Kea. The most crownward placement of the Danish 
species would seem to be as sister to all living psittaciforms.


Birds are generally cool animals (I think), and it is much fun to take the 
increasingly robust phylogenies we're getting these days and map characters 
onto them, to see their evolutionary patterns. Particularly to Stephan 
Pickering but to all others, there is a new study on trogons where this has 
been done to good effect: 
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03647.x


Regards,

Eike


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