Avifilopluma
Sign in to saveAvifilopluma ("bird filoplumes") is a clade containing all animals with feathers. Unlike most clades, which are defined based on relative relationships, Avifilopluma is defined based on an apomorphy, that is, a unique physical characteristic shared by one group and not found outside that group (in this case, feathers). Its content is unclear, and has been speculated to range from Coelurosauria to all of Ornithodira.
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Avifilopluma ("bird filoplumes") is a clade containing all animals with feathers. Unlike most clades, which are defined based on relative relationships, Avifilopluma is defined based on an apomorphy, that is, a unique physical characteristic shared by one group and not found outside that group (in this case, feathers). Its content is unclear, and has been speculated to range from Coelurosauria to all of Ornithodira.
==Definition== The clade Avifilopluma was created along with several other apomorphy-based clades relating to birds by Jacques Gauthier and Kevin de Queiroz in a 2001 paper. Their specific definition for the group was "the clade stemming from the first pan-avian with feathers homologous (synapomorphic) with those of Aves (Vultur gryphus Linnaeus 1758)."
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Avifilopluma” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.