Jakarta –
The modern birds we see today are the result of evolution from the past. Previous research suggests that this evolution occurred at the same time as the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, after an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago.
Although this collision caused the extinction of three of the four species living on the planet, the bird group managed to survive. From the facts discovered, paleontologists have long argued that the asteroid impact triggered a major wave of bird evolution because it eliminated much of the competition, providing an opportunity to evolve into today’s diversity of bird species.
But new research provides evidence to suggest that the evolution of modern birds began much earlier than previously thought, even before the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The research, led by scientists from China and the United States, analyzed the genomes of 124 living bird species and created an evolutionary tree for Neoaves, which includes 95% of today’s bird species.
The report was published earlier this month in the journal Proceedings oh the National Academy of Sciences, under the title ‘Genomes, Fossils, and the Concurrent Rise of Modern Birds and Flowering Plants in the Late Cretaceous’.
The research team led by evolutionary biologist Wu Shaoyuan said this catastrophic phenomenon had only a small impact on the evolution of the bird family.
“It seems that this major catastrophic phenomenon has had a limited impact on bird evolution,” said Wu, quoted by detikINET from People Daily Online.
Using methods that combine fossil records, Wu and fellow researchers also examined 25,460 genetic loci across four DNA classes and used the collected data to build their family tree. Then they refined their findings with age estimates for 19 bird fossils.
Researchers also assess this split to have occurred in the late Cretaceous period (roughly 87 million years ago), long before the event that wiped out the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. This finding challenges the belief that the extinction of dinosaurs was followed by the rapid evolution of birds.
Using this method, Wu discovered the oldest split in the bird lineage and created two lineages, namely one lineage that gave rise to palaeognathae such as ostriches, emus, and ratites. While the other line consists of all modern birds such as negnatlehs.
Then, the research team concluded that the global warming event that occurred 55 million years ago was responsible for the evolution of modern seabird species such as penguins and gulls. These findings provide a comprehensive perspective on bird evolution.
“The development of modern birds, unlike previously known patterns of rapid evolutionary change, is a gradual and continuous process driven by natural selection. This tends to go hand in hand with the diversification of plants, mammals, fish and insects,” said another research team, Zhou Zhonghe from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Watch the video “About Megalosaurus, the First Dinosaur Named 200 Years Ago”
(rns/rns)
2024-02-23 04:45:38
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