Living dinosaurs : the evolutionary history of modern birds /

• Corporate Author: Wiley InterScience (Online service)
• Other Authors: Dyke, Gareth, Kaiser, Gary W.
• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Chichester, West Sussex ; Hoboken, NJ : Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
• Subjects: Birds > Evolution.; Paleobiology.; NATURE > Animals > Birds.; NATURE > Birdwatching Guides.; SCIENCE > Life Sciences > Zoology > Ornithology.; Electronic books.

Living Dinosaurs offers a snapshot of our current understanding of the origin and evolution of birds. After slumbering for more than a century, avian palaeontology has been awakened by startling new discoveries on almost every continent. Controversies about whether dinosaurs had real feathers or whe...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: the deep evolutionary history of modern birds. Introduction: changing the questions in avian paleontology / Gary Kaiser, Gareth Dyke
• Theropod diversity and the refinement of avian characteristics / Peter J. Makovicky, Lindsay E. Zanno
• Why were there dinosaurs? Why are there birds? / Peter Ward, Robert Berner
• Pre-modern birds: avian divergences in the mesozoic / Jingmai O'Connor, Luis M. Chiappe, Alyssa Bell
• "The contribution of paleontology to ornithology": the diversity of modern birds: fossils and the avian tree of life. Progress and obstacles in the phylogenetics of modern birds / Bradley C. Livezey
• The utility of fossil taxa and the evolution of modern birds: commentary and analysis / Gareth Dyke, Eoin Gardiner
• Penguins past, present, and future: trends in the evolution of the sphenisciformes / Daniel T. Ksepka, Tatsuro Ando
• Phorusrhacids: the terror birds / Herculano Alvarenga, Luis Chiappe, Sara Bertelli
• The pseudo-toothed birds (aves, odontopterygiformes) and their bearing on the early evolution of modern birds / Estelle Bourdon
• Phylogeny and diversification of modern passerines / F. Keith Barker
• The evolution of key avian attributes. Morphological and behavioral correlates of flapping flight / Bret W. Tobalske, Douglas R. Warrick, Brandon E. Jackson, Kenneth P. Dial
• Evolution of the avian brain and senses / Stig Walsh, Angela Milner
• Evolving perceptions on the antiquity of the modern avian tree / Joseph W. Brown, M. Van Tuinen
• Major events in avian genome evolution / Chris L. Organ, Scott V. Edwards
• Bird evolution across the K-Pg boundary and the basal neornithine diversification / Bent E.K. Lindow
• Functional and phylogenetic diversity in marine and aquatic birds / Gary Kaiser
• The future: conservation and climate change. The state of the world's birds and the future of avian diversity / Gavin H. Thomas.