Migratory birds 24 f & # XE9; February 2009 in the north of Israel & # xeb; the
Migratory birds February 24, 2009 in northern Israel – Menahem Kahana AFP

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It took four years of work, scientists 200, 300 years of computing time and computer analysis by supercomputers. But since Thursday, we know that birds, called “modern” appeared “promptly” after the dinosaurs, not millions of years ago …

It was on the genome of some 48 major avian species (ostrich, duck, hawk, parrot, ibis, eagle, etc.), which is unprecedented for a single animal family that are addressed to the international experts, based in China, the United UNite or in France. And extensive genomic study sends waltz the hypothesis put forward so far and that birds had appeared 10 to 80 million years before the dinosaurs disappeared.



An evolution Accelerated

Research that resulted in 28 studies, eight of which were published on Thursday in the journal Science . Unprecedented work that demonstrate and argue that only a few species of birds survived the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years here.

species that then experienced a kind of “big bang” .dropoff window In other words, experience accelerated evolution for the emergence in less than 15 million years of spectacular avian diversity.

Chicken, cousin of the dinosaurs

One of these studies also revealed some rather funny specificities. Birds, crocodiles (their closest living cousin) and therefore have the same dinosaur ancestors archosaurs. And chicken share more similarities in its chromosomes with dinosaurs than other birds. This new family tree of birds solves further longstanding debates about the relationship between species and their origins. This work enables, for example, confirmed that aquatic birds have three separate origins and that the common ancestor of terrestrial birds (parrots, woodpecker, owl, eagle, hawk, etc.) was a big predator.

& gt; & gt; Read here United States: The oldest dinosaur horn was the size of a crow

According six other studies, some bird species have the same genes as humans for learning sounds. “We have long known that there are similarities between birdsong and human speech but we did not know if the same genes were involved … and the answer is yes,” welcomed Erich Jarvis, a researcher from Duke University (North Carolina), revealing the way the birds that survived the dinosaurs have lost their teeth there are about 116 million years …