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Pelecaniformes
Fossil range: Late Cretaceous - Recent
Blue-footed Booby
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Pelecaniformes
Sharpe, 1891
Families

and see article text. Late Cretaceous (100mya - 65mya refers to the second half of the Cretaceous Period, named after the famous white Chalk cliffs of southern England The Blue-footed Booby ( Sula nebouxii) is a Bird in the Sulidae family which comprises ten Species of long-winged Seabirds Chordates ( Phylum Chordata) are a group of Animals that includes the Vertebrates together with several closely related Invertebrates Birds ( class Aves) are bipedal endothermic ( Warm-blooded) Vertebrate animals that lay eggs. Richard Bowdler Sharpe ( 22 November 1847 - 25 December 1909) was an English Zoologist. In Biological classification, family ( Latin The darters or snake-birds are birds in the family Anhingidae. The frigatebirds are a family Fregatidae, of Seabirds There are five Species in the single Genus Fregata. A pelican is a large water Bird with a distinctive pouch under the beak belonging to the Bird family Pelecanidae. The Bird family Phalacrocoracidae is represented by some 40 Species of cormorants and shags. The Bird family Sulidae comprises the Gannets and boobies. Both groups are medium-large coastal Seabirds that plunge-dive for fish

The Pelecaniformes are an order of medium-sized and large waterbirds found worldwide. This article is about the taxonomic rank for the sequence of species in a taxonomic list see Taxonomic order In scientific classification used They are distinguished from other birds by the possession of feet with all four toes webbed (totipalmate). Birds ( class Aves) are bipedal endothermic ( Warm-blooded) Vertebrate animals that lay eggs. They all have a bare throat patch (gular patch). The nostrils have evolved into dysfunctional slits and unlike other birds, they breathe through their mouths. There are some 50-60 living species, depending on which families are placed in this group.

They feed on fish, squid or similar marine life. Nesting is colonial, but individual birds are monogamous. Monogamy is the custom or condition of having only one mate in a Relationship, thus forming a Couple. The young are altricial, hatching from the egg helpless and naked. Altricial means "requiring nourishment" and refers to a pattern of growth and development in organisms which are incapable of moving around on their own soon after hatching or

Contents

Systematics and evolution

Sibley and Ahlquist's landmark DNA-DNA hybridisation studies (see Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy) led to them placing the families traditionally contained within the Pelecaniformes together with the grebes, cormorants, ibises and spoonbills, New World vultures, storks, penguins, albatrosses, petrels, and loons together as a sub-group within a greatly expanded order Ciconiiformes, a radical move which by now has been all but rejected: their "Ciconiiformes" merely assembled all early advanced land- and seabirds for which their research technique delivered insufficient phylogenetic resolution. Charles Gald Sibley ( August 7, 1917 – April 12, 1998) was an American Ornithologist and Molecular biologist DNA-DNA hybridization generally refers to a Molecular biology technique that measures the degree of genetic similarity between pools of DNA sequences The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy is a radical bird Taxonomy proposed by Charles Sibley and Jon Edward Ahlquist. Grebes are members of the Podicipediformes order, a widely distributed order of freshwater diving birds some of which visit the sea when migrating The Bird family Phalacrocoracidae is represented by some 40 Species of cormorants and shags. The family Threskiornithidae includes 36 Species of large terrestrial and wading Birds falling into two subfamilies the Ibises The New World vulture family Cathartidae contains seven Species found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas. Storks are large long-legged long-necked wading Birds with long stout bills, belonging to the family Ciconiidae. Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless Birds living almost Albatrosses, of the biological family Diomedeidae, are large Seabirds allied to the procellariids, Storm-petrels and Diving-petrels This article is about the petrel seabirds For other uses see Petrel (disambiguation. The loons (eg North America or divers (eg UK/Ireland are a group of aquatic birds found in many parts of North America and northern Eurasia Traditionally the order Ciconiiformes has included a variety of large long-legged wading birds with large bills Storks Herons Egrets

Recent research strongly suggests that the similarities between the Pelecaniformes as traditionally defined are the result of convergent evolution rather than common descent, and that the group is paraphyletic[1]. Convergent evolution describes the acquisition of the same biological trait in unrelated lineages In Phylogenetics, a group of organisms is said to be paraphyletic if the group contains its most recent common ancestor but does not contain all All families in the traditional or revised Pelecaniformes except the Phalacrocoracidae have only a few handfuls of species at most, but many were more numerous in the early Neogene. The Neogene is a geologic period and system starting 2303 ± 0 Fossil genera and species are discussed in the respective family or genus accounts; one little-known prehistoric pelecaniforms, however, cannot be classified accurately enough to assign them to a family. This is "Sula" ronzoni from Early Oligocene rocks at Ronzon (France), which was initially believed to be a sea-duck and possibly is an ancestral pelecaniform. The Oligocene is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene period and extends from about 33 This article is about the country For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic France topics. Mergus is the Genus of the typical mergansers, fish-eating Ducks in the Seaduck subfamily (Merginae

The "pelecaniform" lineages appear to have originated around the end of the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous (kriːˈteɪʃəs, usually abbreviated 'K' for its German translation "Kreide" is a geologic period and system, reaching from the end of Monophyletic or not, they appear to belong to a close-knit group of "higher waterbirds" which also includes groups such as penguins and Procellariiformes. Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are a group of aquatic, flightless Birds living almost Procellariiformes is an order of Seabirds that comprises four families: the Albatrosses procellariids, Storm-petrels and Diving It is interesting to note that there are quite a lot of fossil bones from around the K–Pg boundary which cannot be firmly placed with any of these orders and rather combine traits of several of them. The K-T boundary is a geological signature usually a thin band dated to 65 This is of course only to be expected, if the theory that most if not all of these "higher waterbird" lineages originated around that time is correct. Of those apparently basal taxa, the following show some similarities to the traditional Pelecaniformes:

The proposed Elopterygidae - supposedly a family of Cretaceous Pelecaniformes - are neither monophyletic nor does Elopteryx appear to be a modern bird[2]. In Phylogenetics, a basal Clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade it appears at the base of a cladogram A taxon (plural taxa) or taxonomic unit, is a name designating an organism or a group of Organisms In Biological nomenclature according to Lonchodytes is a Late Cretaceous Genus of Aquatic Bird, which lived along the shores of the Western Interior Seaway Torotix is a Late Cretaceous Genus of Aquatic Bird. It lived along the shores of the Western Interior Seaway, but Tytthostonyx is a Genus of prehistoric Seabird. Found in the much-debated Hornerstown Formation which straddles the Cretaceous-Paleocene In zoological nomenclature, a nomen dubium ( Latin for "doubtful name" plural nomina dubia) is a scientific name that is Elopteryx is a Genus of Maniraptoran Theropod Dinosaur based on fragmentary Fossils found in late Cretaceous A clade is a taxonomic group comprising a single Common ancestor and all the descendants of that ancestor Argilliornis from the Early Eocene of England (London Clay) may be a pelagornithid.

List of Pelecaniformes families

The following four families can be united as suborder Sulae:

Disputed Pelecaniformes

The following families are traditionally placed into the Pelecaniformes, but probably do not belong there:

The shoebill and the hammerkop, which make up the monotypic families (Balaenicipitidae and Scopidae, respectively) usually placed with the traditional Ciconiiformes, may be very distinct pelecaniform lineages instead. The Shoebill, Balaeniceps rex, also known as Whalehead, is a very large Bird related to the Storks It derives its name from its massive The Hammerkop ( Scopus umbretta) also known as Hamerkop, Hammerhead, Hammerhead Stork, Umbrette, Umber Bird, Tufted Monotypic is an adjective that refers to a taxonomic group with only one type: In Botany, "monotypic" means that a Taxon has only

Footnotes

  1. ^ Mayr (2003)
  2. ^ Mortimer (2004)
  3. ^ Mayr (2003), Bourdon et al. (2005)

References

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