Livezey and Zusi's big bird morph analysis and Archaeopteryx 10

[Michael Mortimer <mickey_mortimer111@msn.com>]

Finally, the Livezey and Zusi's long-awaited morphological analysis of Aves 
is published!  And the pdf is freely available.
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/zoj/149/1

Livezey and Zusi, 2007. Higher-order phylogeny of modern birds (Theropoda, 
Aves: Neornithes) based on comparative anatomy. II. Analysis and discussion. 
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 149 (1), 1-95.

"Thirty-five outgroup taxa encompassing Crocodylia, predominately
theropod Dinosauria, and selected Mesozoic birds were used to root the 
trees. Based on study of specimens
and the literature, 2954 morphological characters were defined; these 
characters have been described in a companion
work, approximately one-third of which were multistate (i.e. comprised at 
least three states), and states within more
than one-half of these multistate characters were ordered for analysis."

2954 characters!!!!???  Have I gone to Heaven? ;)  From my preliminary 
skimming of pages, note that even this huge of a morphological analysis 
seems to be corrupted by convergent taxa grouping together (grebes and 
loons, etc.), if molecular analyses are anything to judge by.  But damn.... 
this is THE morphological analysis of living birds.

And just to make this issue even better, we get an osteology of the new 
Archaeopteryx specimen.

Mayr, Pohl, Hartman and Peters, 2007. The tenth skeletal specimen of 
Archaeopteryx. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 149 (1), 97?116.

Mickey Mortimer