New flight trajectory for bird origins

A golden pheasant at the Ganshan National Forest Park in Sanmenxia, Henan province. LI PEIXIAN/FOR CHINA DAILY Chinese and US scientists have teamed up to achieve breakthrough findings that dispel myths and explain how today's avian species came to be, Yang Feiyue reports. Significant recent breakthroughs are helping answer these questions, thanks to genomic research on terrestrial vertebrates led by Chinese scientists, who collaborated with their US counterparts to make strides in unraveling the mysteries surrounding the origins of modern birds. "Using new approaches to mine genomic information among 124 species, covering most modern birds' diversity, we found that the main lineages first divided into two groups — one mostly land-based and the other containing waterbird species," says Wu Shaoyuan, a professor from Jiangsu Normal University in Xuzhou, who led the research team. Aquaterraves, along with the previously identified land birds, constitute the two major lineages of Neoaves, a clade to which almost 95 percent of the roughly 10,000 known species of extant birds belong.