ratites
grrlscientist | July 2, 2010tags: What, If Anything, Is Big Bird?, taxonomy, taxonomy, evolution, Grandicrocavis, Big Bird, flightless birds, ratites, humor, comedy, science humor, dinosaur humor, Mike Dickison, PechaKucha, Christchurch, streaming video
Years ago, when Zoologist Mike Dickison was in the early stages of his PhD, he gave a joke presentation at a graduate student conference on the taxonomy and evolution of a giant flightless bird. It was the sort of thing you'd see at any conference on avian evolution: a Latin name, reconstructed skeleton, possible place on the great evolutionary tree of birds. The tone…
grrlscientist | December 19, 2008tags: evolution, behavioral ecology, parental care, egg incubation, dinosaurs, birds
The Oviraptorid dinosaur, Citipati osmolskae,
on a nest of eggs that was unearthed in the Gobi desert
of Mongolia by the American Museum of Natural History.
Image: Mick Ellison, American Museum of Natural History.
Oviraptors ("egg seizer") were given their name because their fossil remains were first discovered on top of a pile of eggs. Because of their close proximity to clutches of dinosaur eggs, it was initially assumed that these dinosaurs were eating them. However, in his 1924 paper, their…
grrlscientist | September 18, 2008tags: ratite, tinamous, evolution, biogeography, phylogenomics, convergence, flightlessness, Paleognath, homoplasy, vicariance
White-throated Tinamou, Tinamus guttatus.
Image: Wikipedia.
New research suggests the ostriches, emus, rheas and other flightless birds known as ratites have lost the ability to fly many times, rather than just once, as long thought. Further, the ratites appear to form a group with the tinamous, a group of birds that can fly, while the ostriches are set apart as the "sister group" -- the closest relatives.
Birds are divided into two groups based on jawbone…