Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!rising
From: rising@utzoo.uucp (Jim Rising)
Subject: Birds & Turtles
Message-ID: <1989Apr11.131627.28432@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 89 13:16:27 GMT

Birds are not particularly closely related to turtles.  The turtles
represent one lineage of amniotes descended from stem reptiles.
Birds & alligators are modern representatives of another (the
subclass Archosauria that included as well "dinosaurs" and pterosaurs).
Snakes & lizards, mammals, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs likewise
represent similarly distinct lineages--and these all appeared in the
late Paleozoic Era or early Mesozoic--about 280 000 000.  So, modern
birds aren't any more closely related to modern turtles than we are.

--Jim Rising
-- 
Name:     Jim Rising
Mail:     Dept. Zoology, Univ. Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada    M5S 1A1
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