“A history of birds in 48 genomes”

A piece in the 13 December 2014 issue of the Economist reported on an article that had just been published in Science.

It seems that a major research project has recently sequenced the genomes of 48 different species of modern birds, showing that the Neoaves, the biological “clade” that contains 95% of modern bird species (though not chickens and ducks), “arose in a spectacular burst of evolution and diversification just a few million years after the asteroid strike” roughly 65 million years ago that killed the dinosaurs off.  But it didn’t kill them all off:  The study also appears to demonstrate what scientists had long theorized — namely, that most of our birds descended from the theropods, a category of two-legged dinosaurs that, among others, included Tyrannosaurus rex.

Next time you find yourself watching the sparrows on your lawn or the hummingbirds vying for domination of your bird feeder, think about that.  And shiver.  Maybe Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds wasn’t so far off, after all.