"Revolutionizing Bird Evolution: Unveiling the New 'Tree of Life'"
Originally Published 1 year ago — by Phys.org
A frozen section of the bird genome, which refused to mix with nearby DNA, has led scientists to revise their understanding of bird evolution. This anomaly, dating back to the extinction of dinosaurs, misled researchers into grouping birds into two major categories, with flamingos and doves as evolutionary cousins. However, a more accurate family tree, accounting for this genomic anomaly, identifies four main groups and reveals that flamingos and doves are more distantly related. This discovery highlights the impact of suppressed recombination on genetic analysis and suggests that similar mysteries may exist in the genomes of other species.
