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  1. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    The following are the families that would be LOST using this metric Corcoracidae (Apostlebirds) and Ifritidae (Blue-capped Ifrits) - low diversity groups that would be merged and treated as subfamilies within a broader Paradisaeidae. Not one hundred % sold that the dates are as young as they...
  2. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Since my last post I have received the Largest Avian Radiation book and have skimmed through that source, as well as other papers. The authors of that books suggest a good cut off for Passeriformes would be 20 million years, but then include so many exceptions that it kind of renders trying to...
  3. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I am not sure I would say "well into the tertiary" Most modern orders would have been probably present by the end of the Paleocene, less than 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaur, if not before. Birds would have rapidly radiated after the K-Pg. Also, most likely some of those...
  4. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I honestly would just keep fossil taxa as unranked. We can create clade names and such without necessarily assigning them to family, order, etc. Obviously keep the existing names but I would be careful about creating new ones. Otherwise you get into a weird situation where either you have to...
  5. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Actually, I fail to see how the existence of Neornithes older than the Eocene makes any difference at all to this exercise. My calibration points are design to account for crown bird diversity. The oldest crown Neoavian is Paleocene; fossil evidence at the point seems pretty clear that the...
  6. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Honestly it seems like a reasonable arrangement, although it does mean more "low diversity" subfamilies and tribes. At least each split seems to be mostly recognizing distinct groups of birds Probably most debatable thing is splitting off Rollulidae but keeping traditional Pavoninae and...
  7. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I am trying to intergrate and experiment with multiple ranks to see how things look, at least for non-passeriformes. I came out with this taxonomy for Galliformes last night, fixing Order to the approximate time of the PETM (~55 Ma), Families to before the Oligocene (>34 Ma), Subfamilies to...
  8. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    From a utility standpoint, it would make it easier to use tribes if each of these were there own separate families Again, this is just a thought experiment and test to see how these different time periods work for calibrating rank. For Non-Passeriformes I could see using the PETM for Orders...
  9. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I feel like 14 mya is IMHO a little too young, but I would also be interested in your classification Same I just bit the bullet and ordered a copy of the Passeriformes radiation book. Hope its worth the $$$!
  10. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Anyway, to sum things up for Families: 1) Using the Eocene as an absolute Calibration Point does a pretty good job of recognizing Non-Passeriformes diversity, but fails to capture the diversity in songbirds, to a degree that makes even the use of lower ranks difficult. 2) Using the Oligocene...
  11. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    LeNomenclatoriste corrected me since my earlier post, hence the change.
  12. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    That's not quite true. There is a difference between "Differences were never noticed because no one bothered looking" and "has no morphological differences". Especially with species that are poorly represented in museum collections. from the paper describing the genus: A large podargid with...
  13. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Yes but not exactly unexpected. Whereas the Eocene demarcation did a good job with Non-Passeriformes but overlumped songbirds, this one does okay with songbirds but significantly increases the number of families for non-songbirds A soft approach however lumped anything of Miocene age or younger...
  14. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Hawks and Eagles Gampsonychidae (Pearl Kites), Elanidae (Elanine Kites), Polyboroididae (Harrier-Hawks), Gypohieracidae (Palm-nut Vultures), Gypaetidae (Lammergeiers), Eutriorchidae (Malagasy Serpent-Eagles), Chondrohieracidae (Hook-billed Kites), Avicedidae (Bazas and Cuckoo-Hawks), Pernidae...
  15. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Cranes and Rails Himantornithidae (Primitive Rails) (?), Pardirallidae (Wood-rails and Allies), Fulicidae (Coots, Moorhens, and Soras), Porphyrionidae (Swamphens), Zapornidae (True Crakes) Gulls and Shorebirds *Note...I used the most recent Cerny et al phylogeny. There are a lot of error bars...
  16. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Sure...there might be some wrong names in here since I didn't take the chance to check priority, and apologies in advance for any misspellings. I'm just posting the "new families", not posting ALL families that would be valid under this metric. ? represent either groups with few time-dated...
  17. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Tinamiformes: net +3, with both modern subfamilies recognized and split into four families total. Anseriformes: net +5; mostly subfamilies, although a few have poor representation in studies, so it might be really +3 Galliformes: One of the bigger boosts: net +11, including split of the Stone...
  18. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Okay....Now...let try the Oligocene as a family bench mark! The Oligocene is a time period between the Eocene and the start of the "modern era", which begins in the Miocene. During this time period you see a lot of more archaic fauna go extinct as the "modern" fauna becomes established. It was...
  19. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    As a paleontologist, I am very skeptical of the idea that most bird orders were present at or around the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs, So I would personally suggest instead to use the PETM event at 56 million years ago. This seems to fit with studies suggesting younger origination...
  20. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    So like I said, there is two ways we can look at the Eocene cut off date: a hard cut off point that would sink anything younger into a larger clade, or a "soft" cut off point that would simply recognize Eocene aged lineages without necessitating lower level lumps. If we take the soft approach...
  21. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Oh yes...I am not going to batter down the doors of AOS/SACC/IOC and demand changes. I am just looking to see what ways things could be changed so that a rank meant something more concrete then "This is nested in that" I also picked the most conservative age cut off possible for this list, in...
  22. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Garcia and Matzke 2021, which I was using for Rails, has them as the earliest diverging lineage of Rallidae. They are with coots in Kirchman et al 2021, although here they do have some pretty long branch lengths. Clearly more work needs to be done...Garcia and Matzke seem to show the rest of...
  23. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    Feel Free!
  24. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    The Eocene ended 33 Mya. If we use this as a hard cut-off date, the the following changes would need to be made. If a order is not listed, then nothing changes. Also the baseline for comparison is IOC Tinamiformes (Net +1) Tinamidae would need to be split into two families, which correspond to...
  25. Mysticete

    Time calibration and Linnean ranks in birds

    I thought about making this part of making this a part of an existing thread, and it has certainly come up several times. But I think its a distinct enough idea to deserve its own thread, even if a whopping four people care about this stuff here (lolz?) I am a taxonomy nerd. Before I was even a...
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