The bird family tree below includes only living bird species. The tree has been redrawn from the report by Hackett, et al. (2008) on phylogenomic analysis of bird species using multiple genes. For historical interest, I include the following quote from a previous incarnation of this page:
A peek into the cluttered closet of bird relationships is full of wonderful surprises and delicious riddles. When consensus does emerge on a bird phylogeny, the tree will probably look as unsettling as the *one below. The two dozen or so orders represented might not even stay intact within their present boundaries. *The tree referred to can be seen here.
The Passeriforms are the largest order of birds, which includes crows, starlings and many familiar songbirds (e.g. canaries, sparrows, warblers, mockingbirds, thrushes, swallows and meadowlarks). . Click here to see Cornell University's list of the many families of the Passeriform order. Birds may be found at many locations around the Fort Worth Zoo and many of the orders below are represented at the zoo. More information about the members of these orders may be found at the University of Michigan's Bird Families of the World web site.
Shannon J. Hackett, et al. 2008. A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History. Science 324: 1763-1768.
David P. Mindell Joseph W. Brown. Neornithese. Tree of Life Project. http://tolweb.org/Neornithes/15834
The Cornell University Bird Inventory
http://birds.cornell.edu/LNS/Inventory/birds.htm The University of Michigan
Museum of Zoology Bird Pages
UCMP: Aves Systematics
David P. Mindell, Michael D. Sorenson, and Derek E. Dimcheff
Multiple independent origins of mitochondrial gene order in birds
PNAS 1998; 95: 10693-10697.