Re: African neognaths

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Lauret" <zthemanvirus@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 8:34 PM

Good idea to look for Afrotheria analogs.

> I found these groups to be ancestrally African:
>
> -the "stork-cathartid-pelican-shoebill-hamerkop"-grouping (I will refer to
> them as the suborder Ciconii of an order Ciconiiformes also including
> cormorants,anhingas,gannets,pelagornithids and possibly tropicbirds and
> teratorns.)

Interesting grouping... what is the evidence for its monophyly?

> I think they may have spread out of Africa together with
> Afrotherian emblithopods and desmostylians wich are also found in the
> Oligocene outside their original African range.

Embrithopods outside Africa? Never read of that.

> During the early
> Palaeogene we do actually have some traffic between Europe and Africa in
> either direction.(creodonts,primates and marsupials to,and ostriches from
> Africa.)

Creodonts... maybe _from_ Africa? Primates and non-crown-group metatherians
certainly to Africa. Ostriches IMHO _to_ Africa, via Europe and Asia from
India, as suggested in the paper on mtDNA phylogeny of ratites.

> -Parrots and colies. I think these two groups wich are really ancient and
> strange oddball-neognaths are each other's closest living relative.

Why?

> The most primitive living parrots[...]are the vasa-parrots
> Coracopsis from Madagascar,the Comoros and the Seychelles.The two species
in
> this genus,vasa and nigra,are really weird and primitive,and originally
> African.

Sure? Not originally Outer Gondwanan?

> I think they proof that the entire parrot-crown group originated in
> Africa,spreading across Antarctica to Australia and South America.

The _basalmost_ known psittaciforms are from the Eocene of Messel and the
London Clay, though.

> >>From this it must be clear that I don't support the
columbiform-psittaciform
> relation wich is usually advocated.

Any idea for or against columbiforms being the sistergroup to this?

> This is it for now. I think there may be other ancestrally African
> groups,like the Passerida,

Australian, no?

I wait for more fossils of *Eremopezus*. Last we've read of it was that it
was not an aepyornithid and maybe carnivorous.