Geranoididae
Sign in to saveGeranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds. Recent research shows that these birds may actually be palaeognaths related to ostriches.
In the Vinony graph
Within Vinony's link graph, Geranoididae is referenced by 76 other articles, and connects out to Rheiformes, Eogruidae and Apteryx.
It is catalogued under topics including Extinct flightless birds, Paleogene birds of North America and Prehistoric bird families.
Its subject is documented across 6 Wikipedia language editions.
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Encyclopedic overview
5 sectionsContents
- Classification
- Taxonomy
- Paleobiology
- Paleoecology and distribution
- References
Geranoididae is a clade of extinct birds from the early to late Eocene and possibly early Oligocene of North America and Europe. These were mid-sized, long-legged flightless birds. Recent research shows that these birds may actually be palaeognaths related to ostriches.
==Classification== It is rather unambiguous that geranoidids are either part of or stem representatives of Gruoidea, the clade that includes modern cranes, limpkins and trumpeters, though their precise relationship varies among studies, some recovering them as sister taxa to another clade of flightless ratite-like birds, the eogruiids. The most recent consensus appears to be that geranoidids are outside of Gruoidea, with eogruiids being more closely related to modern cranes. However, Mayr (2019) argued that close affinities between Geranoididae and the palaeognathous family Palaeotididae are at least as well supported as the classification of geranoidids into the Gruiformes.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Geranoididae” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.