But back to the tree of life: birds' descent from Theropods ... per definition, reptiles." This is why phylogeny is valuable, ...

Both birds and reptiles are descended from the group Reptilia, which are diapsids, or animals with two openings on each side of the skull. So from a phylogenetic standpoint, birds are reptiles.

Tree diagrams have been used ... traditional (but misleading) concept of "reptiles," which included lizards, snakes, crocodiles, and turtles, but not birds. Because "reptiles" (in this sense ...

By combining data on all known bird species, this tree is the most impressive snapshot yet of one of Earth’s most ...

The resulting phylogenetic estimate offers novel insights into the rapid radiation of modern birds and provides a taxon-rich backbone tree for future comparative studies.” By updating the family ...

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project has the goal of creating a full tree of life, or phylogeny, for the world’s birds. By collecting genetic information for all 10,560 species ...

That point was driven home this week with the release of the genomes of 45 bird species, which reassigned some perches on the avian evolutionary tree and included some seemingly odd bedfellows.

The family tree ... living bird species compared to only 24 crocodile species. Crocodiles are the only living members of a mostly extinct clade called archosaurs or “ruling reptiles.” ...