this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
1073 points (98.7% liked)

Science Memes

11399 readers
1270 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Interesting! Have we identified the last common ancestor of all modern birds yet? Or at least an estimate of when it would have lived?

[–] HeavenlySpoon@ttrpg.network 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It seems quite a few modern birds (Aves) lineages survived the K-Pg extinction (at least 5, last I checked), but when exactly they diversified is apparently still a contentious issue. The common ancestor almost definitely lived sometime during the cretaceous, so not THAT long ago in the grand scheme of things, but it definitely lived either before or during T-rex’s reign.

I was referring to Avialae, which is the clade defined as all dinosaurs more closely related to budgies than to deinonychus. Many of them would have seemed quite birdy to us, but like the other dinosaurs not many of them made it to the current day and the ones that did are all Aves.

It seems quite a few modern birds (Aves) lineages survived the K-Pg extinction (at least 5, last I checked)

Cool! Do we know how modern birds relate to these 5 lineages? (i.e. which branch became sparrows, ducks, ostriches, etc.?)