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Parrots have featured in human writings, story, art, humor, religion, and music for thousands of years, such as Aesop's fable "The parrot and the cat", [127] the mention "The parrot can speak, and yet is nothing more than a bird" in The Book of Rites of Ancient China, [128] the Masnavi by Rumi of Persia in 1250 "The Merchant and the Parrot". [129]
The evolution of birds began in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropod dinosaurs named Paraves. [1] Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. For more than a century, the small theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx lithographica from the Late Jurassic period was considered to have been the earliest bird.
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]
The evolution of birds is thought to have begun in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. The earliest known species in Aves is Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the Late Jurassic period. Modern phylogenetics place birds in the dinosaur clade Theropoda.
The bony fish evolved into two separate groups: the Actinopterygii (or ray-finned fish) and Sarcopterygii (which includes the lobe-finned fish). During the Devonian period a great increase in fish variety occurred, especially among the ostracoderms and placoderms, and also among the lobe-finned fish and early sharks.
Weight is the largest obstacle birds must overcome in order to fly. An animal can more easily attain flight by reducing its absolute weight. Birds evolved from other theropod dinosaurs that had already gone through a phase of size reduction during the Middle Jurassic, combined with rapid evolutionary changes. [3]
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Ichthyornis (meaning "fish bird", after its fish-like vertebrae) is an extinct genus of toothy seabird-like ornithuran from the late Cretaceous period of North America.Its fossil remains are known from the chalks of Alberta, Alabama, Kansas (Greenhorn Limestone), New Mexico, Saskatchewan, and Texas, in strata that were laid down in the Western Interior Seaway during the Turonian through ...