November 2, 2024

Frozen in Time: How a DNA Anomaly Misled Scientists for Centuries

In the consequences of the extinction occasion, birds– technically dinosaurs themselves– flourished.Scientists have invested centuries attempting to arrange and sort some 10,000 species of birds into one clear household tree to comprehend how the last surviving dinosaurs filled the skies. Cheap DNA sequencing must have made this simple, as it has for countless other species.But birds were prepared to trick us.In a pair of new research documents released today, April 1, researchers reveal that another occasion 65 million years ago deceived them about the true family history of birds. Credit: Daniel J. FieldBreakthrough in Bird Evolution Research”My lab has been breaking away at this problem of bird evolution for longer than I desire to think about,” stated Edward Braun, Ph.D., the senior author of the paper released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor of biology at the University of Florida. Mirarab and Braun also contributed to a companion paper published in Nature that lays out the upgraded bird household tree, which was led by Josefin Stiller at the University of Copenhagen.Both documents are part of the B10K avian genomics project led by Guojie Zhang of Zhejiang University, Erich Jarvis of Rockefeller University, and Tom Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen.Two equally unique bird household trees.”We found this deceptive region in birds due to the fact that we put a lot of energy into sequencing birds genomes,” Braun said.

In the aftermath of the termination event, birds– technically dinosaurs themselves– flourished.Scientists have invested centuries attempting to organize and sort some 10,000 species of birds into one clear family tree to understand how the last surviving dinosaurs filled the skies. Inexpensive DNA sequencing must have made this simple, as it has for countless other species.But birds were prepared to deceive us.In a pair of new research documents released today, April 1, scientists expose that another occasion 65 million years ago deceived them about the true household history of birds. Mirarab and Braun also contributed to a companion paper published in Nature that lays out the updated bird household tree, which was led by Josefin Stiller at the University of Copenhagen.Both documents are part of the B10K bird genomics project led by Guojie Zhang of Zhejiang University, Erich Jarvis of Rockefeller University, and Tom Gilbert of the University of Copenhagen.Two equally unique bird family trees.