Re: R: One for the bird brigade

[Larry Dunn <majestic_cheese@yahoo.com>]

---Alessandro Marisa <amaris@tin.it> wrote:

> I think that Hoazin is the bird more closely related to Archaeopteryx,
> expecially the juvenile Hoazin is more similar to Archaeopteryx.

I just checked Mike Keesey's DINOSAURICON, and he has kindly provided
the web-head a cladogram of Neornithes.  It seems to my
new-to-cladistics eye that the closer clade is Palaeognathae,
including the polyphyletic tinamous (say that ten times fast) and the
assorted rogue's gallery of ratites.

So.  Ostriches, Emus, the always-fun Cassowary, big flightless
feathered types, are the closest living ancestors to Archaeopteryx? 
Strange but ... true?

Hoazin is further down the line.  Further even than the dreaded Grebe.

==
Larry

"In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire."
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

http://members.tripod.com/~megalania/index.html

_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com