Scientists have finally completed the bird family tree

The journal Science published eight papers about birds Thursday and an additional 20 reports will appear in Genome Biology, GigaScience and other journals in the next few days.

The paper in Science said the genetic code of 48 birds has been uncovered. The 48 bird species include crow, ibis, falcon, duck, parakeet, crane, eagle and woodpecker. These birds represent all major branches of modern birds.

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The massive data revealed to scientists new information about the origin of birds, their genes and brain mechanisms that explain their behavior and relationships to each other.

The team that sequenced, assembled and compared full genomes of 48 bird species were led by Erich Jarvis of Duke University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; M. Thomas Gilbert of the Natural History Museum of Denmark and Guojie Zhang of the National Genebank at BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute) in China and the University of Copenhagen;

Birds are the surviving descendants of dinosaurs but understanding why they survived and why dinosaurs didn't have been mysteries for decades. The truth is, scientists are having a hard time explaining the mystery because birds split into different species millions of years ago.

With the newly gathered data, scientists are able to unravel the mystery.

"This is the largest whole genomic study across a single vertebrate class to date. The success of this project can only be achieved with the excellent collaboration of all the consortium members," said Zhang.

Tagsbird evolution, animal evolution, evolution, dinosaur. dinosaur extinction, genome sequencing, ancient animals, descendants of dinosaurs, vertebrate