Am 25.09.2011 22:19, schrieb evelyn sobielski:
Coliiformes are hopeless via DNA. But the framework now exists for morph.
Hindlimb myology puts them next to... parrots.Retroposons are "molecular morphology". Their presence & absence behaves like a morphological character, an idealized one in fact.
Both radiations must have occurred in the late K. We have some fossils which very much look as if they'd turn out on one "side" of charadriiforms, Aequornithes etc. or the "opposite" one
Namely? Several have been proposed, but all are either too fragmentary to tell or have been removed from Neornithes. The latter just happened to *Palintropus* in the paper you mention at the end of your message.