Field, D. J. et al. Early evolution of modern birds structured by global forest collapse at the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Curr. Biol. 28, 1825–1831 (2018).
Larson, D. W., Brown, C. M. & Evans, D. C. Dental disparity and ecological stability in bird-like dinosaurs prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Curr. Biol. 26, 1325–1333 (2016).
Saupe, E. E. et al. Climatic shifts drove major contractions in avian latitudinal distributions throughout the Cenozoic. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA116, 12895–12900 (2019).
Ksepka, D. T. & Phillips, M. J. Avian diversification patterns across the K–Pg boundary: influence of calibrations, datasets, and model misspecification. Ann. Mo. Bot. Gard. 100, 300–328 (2015).
Field, D. J. et al. Timing the extant avian radiation: the rise of modern birds, and the importance of modeling molecular rate variation. PeerJ Preprints7, e27521v1 (2019).
11.
Mayr, G. Avian Evolution (Wiley, 2016).
12.
Clarke, J. A., Tambussi, C. P., Noriega, J. I., Erickson, G. M. & Ketcham, R. A. Definitive fossil evidence for the extant avian radiation in the Cretaceous. Nature433, 305–308 (2005).
Xing, L., Stanley, E. L., Bai, M. & Blackburn, D. C. The earliest direct evidence of frogs in wet tropical forests from Cretaceous Burmese amber. Sci. Rep. 8, 8770 (2018).
Evers, S. W., Barrett, P. M. & Benson, R. B. J. Anatomy of Rhinochelys pulchriceps (Protostegidae) and marine adaptation during the early evolution of chelonioids. PeerJ7, e6811 (2019).
Lee, M. S. Y. & Yates, A. M. Tip-dating and homoplasy: reconciling the shallow molecular divergences of modern gharials with their long fossil record. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B285, 20181071 (2018).
Hope, S. in Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs (eds Chiappe, L. M. & Witmer, L. M.) 339–388 (Univ. California Press, 2002).
20.
Longrich, N. R., Tokaryk, T. & Field, D. J. Mass extinction of birds at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA108, 15253–15257 (2011).
Clyde, W. C., Ramezani, J., Johnson, K. R., Bowring, S. A. & Jones, M. M. Direct high-precision U–Pb geochronology of the end-Cretaceous extinction and calibration of Paleocene astronomical timescales. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 452, 272–280 (2016).
Gauthier, J. A. & de Queiroz, K. in New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds: Proceedings of the International Symposium in Honor of John H. Ostrom (eds Gauthier, J. & Gall, L. F.) 7–41 (Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 2001).
24.
Keutgen, N. A bioclast-based astronomical timescale for the Maastrichtian in the type area (southeast Netherlands, northeast Belgium) and stratigraphic implications: the legacy of PJ Felder. Neth. J. Geosci. 97, 229–260 (2018).
Field, D. J., Lynner, C., Brown, C. & Darroch, S. A. F. Skeletal correlates for body mass estimation in modern and fossil flying birds. PLoS One8, e82000 (2013).
Elzanowski, A. & Stidham, T. A. Morphology of the quadrate in the Eocene anseriform Presbyornis and extant galloanserine birds. J. Morphol. 271, 305–323 (2010).
Worthy, T. H., Degrange, F. J., Handley, W. D. & Lee, M. S. Y. The evolution of giant flightless birds and novel phylogenetic relationships for extinct fowl (Aves, Galloanseres). R. Soc. Open Sci. 4, 170975 (2017).
Tambussi, C. P., Degrange, F. J., De Mendoza, R. S., Sferco, E. & Santillana, S. A stem anseriform from the early Palaeocene of Antarctica provides new key evidence in the early evolution of waterfowl. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 186, 673–700 (2019).
Mayr, G., De Pietri, V. L., Love, L., Mannering, A. & Scofield, R. P. Oldest, smallest and phylogenetically most basal pelagornithid, from the early Paleocene of New Zealand, sheds light on the evolutionary history of the largest flying birds. Pap. Palaeontol.https://doi.org/10.1002/spp2.1284 (2019).
31.
Budd, G. E. & Mann, R. P. The dynamics of stem and crown groups. Sci. Adv. 6, eaaz1626 (2020).
Ksepka, D. T. & Clarke, J. Phylogenetically vetted and stratigraphically constrained fossil calibrations within Aves. Palaeontologia Electronica18, 18.1.3FC (2015).
Mayr, G., De Pietri, V. L., Scofield, R. P. & Worthy, T. H. On the taxonomic composition and phylogenetic affinities of the recently proposed clade Vegaviidae Agnolín et al., 2017 – neornithine birds from the Upper Cretaceous of the Southern Hemisphere. Cretaceous Research86, 178–185 (2018).
Agnolín, F. L., Egli, F. B., Chatterjee, S., Marsà, J. A. G. & Novas, F. E. Vegaviidae, a new clade of southern diving birds that survived the K/T boundary. Naturwissenschaften104, 87 (2017).
O’Connor, J. K., Chiappe, L. M. & Bell, A. in Living Dinosaurs: The Evolutionary History of Modern Birds (eds Dyke, G. & Kaiser, G.) 39–114 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).
37.
Cracraft, J. in The Phylogeny and Classification of the Tetrapods Vol. 1 (ed. Benton, M. J.) 339–361 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1988).
38.
Livezey, B. C. A phylogenetic analysis of basal Anseriformes, the fossil Presbyornis, and the interordinal relationships of waterfowl. Zool. J. Linn. Soc. 121, 361–428 (1997).
Cracraft, J. & Clarke, J. The basal clades of modern birds. In New Perspectives on the Origin and Early Evolution of Birds: Proceedings of the International Symposium in Honor of John H. Ostrom (eds Gauthier, J. & Gall, L. F.) 143–156 (Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, 2001).
40.
Felice, R. N. & Goswami, A. Developmental origins of mosaic evolution in the avian cranium. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA115, 555–560 (2018).
Huxley, T. H. On the classification of birds; and on the taxonomic value of the modifications of certain of the cranial bones observable in that class. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond. 1867, 415–472 (1867).
Bright, J. A., Marugán-Lobón, J., Rayfield, E. J. & Cobb, S. N. The multifactorial nature of beak and skull shape evolution in parrots and cockatoos (Psittaciformes). BMC Evol. Biol. 19, 104 (2019).
Mourer-Chauviré, C. Les oiseaux fossiles des phosphorites du Quercy (Éocène supérieur a Oligocène supérieur): implications paléobiogéographiques. Geobios15, 413–426 (1982).
Mayr, G. Two-phase extinction of “Southern Hemispheric” birds in the Cenozoic of Europe and the origin of the Neotropic avifauna. Palaeobiodivers. Palaeoenviron. 91, 325–333 (2011).
O’Connor, J. K. & Zhou, Z. The evolution of the modern avian digestive system: insights from paravian fossils from the Yanliao and Jehol biotas. Palaeontology63, 13–27 (2020).
Clarke, J. A. Morphology, phylogenetic taxonomy, and systematics of Ichthyornis and Apatornis (Avialae: Ornithurae). Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. 286, 1–179 (2004).
Mayr, G. & Weidig, I. The early Eocene bird Gallinuloides wyomingensis – a stem group representative of Galliformes. Acta Palaeontol. Pol. 49, 211–217 (2004).
Ksepka, D. T. Broken gears in the avian molecular clock: new phylogenetic analyses support stem galliform status for Gallinuloides wyomingensis and rallid affinities for Amitabha urbsinterdictensis. Cladistics25, 173–197 (2009).
Mayr, G. & Rubilar-Rogers, D. Osteology of a new giant bony-toothed bird from the Miocene of Chile, with a revision of the taxonomy of Neogene Pelagornithidae. J. Vertebr. Paleontol. 30, 1313–1330 (2010).
Bourdon, E. Osteological evidence for sister group relationship between pseudo-toothed birds (Aves: Odontopterygiformes) and waterfowls (Anseriformes). Naturwissenschaften92, 586–591 (2005).
Ronquist, F. et al. MrBayes 3.2: efficient Bayesian phylogenetic inference and model choice across a large model space. Syst. Biol. 61, 539–542 (2012).
Miller, M. A., Pfeiffer, W. & Schwartz, T. Creating the CIPRES Science Gateway for inference of large phylogenetic trees. In Gateway Computing Environments Workshop (GCE 2010) 45–53 (IEEE, 2010).
61.
Lewis, P. O. A likelihood approach to estimating phylogeny from discrete morphological character data. Syst. Biol. 50, 913–925 (2001).
Heath, T. A., Huelsenbeck, J. P. & Stadler, T. The fossilized birth–death process for coherent calibration of divergence-time estimates. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA111, E2957–E2966 (2014).
Zhang, C., Stadler, T., Klopfstein, S., Heath, T. A. & Ronquist, F. Total-evidence dating under the fossilized birth–death process. Syst. Biol. 65, 228–249 (2016).
Kealy, S. & Beck, R. Total evidence phylogeny and evolutionary timescale for Australian faunivorous marsupials (Dasyuromorphia). BMC Evol. Biol. 17, 240 (2017).
Vinther, J., Parry, L., Briggs, D. E. & Van Roy, P. Ancestral morphology of crown-group molluscs revealed by a new Ordovician stem aculiferan. Nature542, 471–474 (2017).
Field, D. J., LeBlanc, A., Gau, A. & Behlke, A. D. B. Pelagic neonatal fossils support viviparity and precocial life history of Cretaceous mosasaurs. Palaeontology58, 401–407 (2015).
He, H. Y. et al. Timing of the Jiufotang Formation (Jehol Group) in Liaoning, northeastern China, and its implications. Geophys. Res. Lett. 31, (2004).
72.
Wang, X. et al. The earliest evidence for a supraorbital salt gland in dinosaurs in new Early Cretaceous ornithurines. Sci. Rep. 8, 3969 (2018).
Musser, G., Ksepka, D. T. & Field, D. J. New material of Paleocene-Eocene Pellornis (Aves: Gruiformes) clarifies the pattern and timing of the extant Gruiform radiation. Diversity11, 102 (2019).
Ksepka, D. T., Stidham, T. A. & Williamson, T. E. Early Paleocene landbird supports rapid phylogenetic and morphological diversification of crown birds after the K–Pg mass extinction. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA114, 8047–8052 (2017).
Püschel, H. P., O’Reilly, J. E., Pisani, D. & Donoghue, P. C. J. The impact of fossil stratigraphic ranges on tip-calibration, and the accuracy and precision of divergence time estimates. Palaeontology63, 67–83 (2020).
Worthy, T. H. et al. Osteology supports a stem-galliform affinity for the giant extinct flightless bird Sylviornis neocaledoniae (Sylviornithidae, Galloanseres). PLoS One11, e0150871 (2016).
Reddy, S. et al. Why do phylogenomic data sets yield conflicting trees? Data type influences the avian tree of life more than taxon sampling. Syst. Biol. 66, 857–879 (2017).
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
