seriemas

More recent studies, with larger data sets, have failed to group any of these birds however, and in fact hoatzins and seriemas seem to be at different ends of the neornithine tree.

Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

The last paper I read put hoatzins with doves, not seriemas and turacos.

Giant hoatzins of doom Darren Naish 2006

To return to phorusrhacids ...... in the previous posts I at least alluded to ideas about their affinities: it is universally agreed that their closest living relatives are the South American seriemas (or cariamids), and it is furthermore agreed that two fossil groups, the bathornithids of Eocene-Miocene North America and the idiornithids of Eocene-Oligocene Europe, are also close relatives of both seriemas and phorusrhacids.

Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

Mourer-Chauviré (1983) regarded idiornithids as similar to both seriemas and hoatzins and her conclusions are similar overall to those of Olson (1985).

Giant hoatzins of doom Darren Naish 2006

More recent studies, with larger data sets, have failed to group any of these birds however, and in fact hoatzins and seriemas seem to be at different ends of the neornithine tree.

Goodbye, my giant predatory, cursorial, flightless hoatzin Darren Naish 2006

In a study of osteological and soft-tissue characters, Mayr & Clarke (2003) also found gruiforms to be polyphyletic: rails, trumpeters and cranes (referred to from hereon as the ‘gruiform core’) were one of the most basal groups within Neoaves, bustards were without close relatives, and seriemas formed a clade with … .. hoatzins.

Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

The main characters tying seriemas, hoatzins, cuckoos and turacos together were those of the hand and the hip muscles, and they were also united in possessing distinctive recesses on the top of the pelvis.

Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

They are universally agreed to be relatives of the living seriemas (Cariamidae), but differ from them in having a far more robust bill and jaws, smaller bony processes on the humerus, and a narrower pelvis.

Archive 2006-10-01 Darren Naish 2006

However, other large-scale studies have found different gruiforms to occupy different positions within the neornithine tree (in the following discussion I have not aimed to be comprehensive: rather, I am most interested in those studies that included seriemas [and hence provide data on the position of cariamaens]).

Archive 2006-11-01 Darren Naish 2006

We saw above that hoatzins have often been linked with turacos, and that turacos share with hoatzins and seriemas that unusual and distinctive robust, bowed third metacarpal, as well as other characters.

Giant hoatzins of doom Darren Naish 2006