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| Dodos: Vultures or Pigeons? | |
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| Topic Started: Mar 14 2018, 09:42 PM (437 Views) | |
| regional_at_best | Mar 14 2018, 09:42 PM Post #1 |
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Nowadays, most people go along with the idea that dodos are related to pigeons and are related to the Nicobar pigeon. I've found this a bit confusing. Since we have barely any soft tissue remains of the long gone dodo, I decided to look at skeletal remains to compare the two. I haven't really found much resemblance. The tooth-billed pigeon, a critically endangered (possibly extinct) bird from Samoa bears a bit of resemblance, but mostly in the coloring and the beak. Sadly, there's not much info available on them, so I'm not sure if there are any other similarities. I've also looked at other pigeon species which are deemed related, such as the Victoria crowned pigeon, and once again, not much of a resemblance. I doubt that a pigeon stuck on a small island for millions of years would change so drastically. Pigeons all retain the same basic body shape. Small beak relative to the head, sleek feathers, etc. A dodo just seems so outlandish compared to them. I'm aware evolution can do some crazy things, especially on islands, but the dodo just doesn't seem pigeon-ish at all. Pigeons aren't known to have bald heads and large beaks in general. They aren't quite the Darwin finches when it comes to beaks. They all have the same basic shape and size. Even the tooth-billed I mentioned earlier still has a small beak, even though it's more of a parrot shape than the usual pigeon. Today, I stumbled upon a blog post which has really intrigued me. https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/dodos-are-flightless-vultures-not-pigeons/ This has some very compelling evidence, and I hope that some DNA research comes up someday comparing Raphus DNA to New World vulture DNA, seeing that the research made on dodo DNA not too long ago only compared it to pigeon species. I tried to do more research on this subject, but I haven't found anything else. Thoughts? I'd like to see more opinions on this. I've been exploring the topic of dodo relatives for a while, and this seems to be the best logical explanation other than grouping them with pigeons. |
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| heliosphoros | Mar 14 2018, 09:56 PM Post #2 |
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Oh, another David Peters lunacy infecting an unsuspecting person thread. Dodos are pigeons, end of story. Their only substantial differences from related pigeons are loss of adaptations for powered flight and larger bills. You're seriously underestimating pigeon diversity, which has produced several types of jaws for various diets. Dodos have diverged from their closest relatives possibly as early as the Oligocene. Plenty of time for a group also capable of disparity to become even more aberrant. Finally, Dodos share absolutely no synapomorphies with vultures or other accipitriformes whatsoever. Genetic data has firmly placed dodos as pigeons, even the more controversial ones. |
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| stargatedalek | Mar 14 2018, 10:11 PM Post #3 |
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!
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The anatomical similarities are rather blatant. Most species infants even display the same bill shape as Raphus. Peter's doesn't even use up to date references for Raphus. |
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| regional_at_best | Mar 14 2018, 10:31 PM Post #4 |
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Ah, apologies. I have never heard of this David guy, I just happened to find that post by accident. May I see some examples of pigeon chicks with the Raphus beak shape? This also brings up another thought; could gene tampering retain that shape? Same goes for the Hoatzin's wing claws, could gene tampering result in the adult retaining the claws? I still realise I have much to learn. I keep thinking I know most about a topic, but then I find out something I didn't know about before. |
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| stargatedalek | Mar 14 2018, 11:40 PM Post #5 |
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!
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People often misunderstand exactly what hoatzin wing claws are, there a lot of erroneous children's books out there that actually seem to base their hoatzin on outdated Archeopteryx wings.![]() These are pretty much exactly what every other bird has under its feathers, except with the addition of nails. Pretty much every baby pigeon has the same beak structure as Raphus, it likely evolved through neoteny.
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| BossAggron | Mar 14 2018, 11:47 PM Post #6 |
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Formerly Dilophoraptor
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David Peters is generally a person you want to avoid on any sort of phylogeny, whe disregards morphology and genetic evidence for generally accepted evolutionary relationships. He doesn't look at actual fossil specimens hands on either, just images off the internet and messing with the contrast setting in photoshop. |
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| Jannick | Mar 15 2018, 12:36 PM Post #7 |
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Papua merdeka!
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I have to say though, remarkably enough the 'Dodo=Vulture' nonsense is not nearly the most bizarre thing in that avian family tree. Like, not by a long shot. Even if you ignore the ridiculous accompanying text on reptileevolution.com (which I was kind of forced to do as it contradicts itself everywhere) the family tree pdf alone gives me headaches, and I'm not even remotely a biologist. It rips apart what's left of Ciconiiformes and places Ciconia near the herons (misguided but somewhat understandable, I guess) but it then takes Jabiru and places it as the sister-group to kingfishers. Not only that, but Peters also removes Guillemots from the rest of the Auk clade and places them next to p e n g u i n s. Coincidentally, the rest of the Auks are retained alongside a weird-ass Pelagornis+Gannet+Petrel clade as the sister group to the Dodo+New World vulture+Pigeon clade. He even goes to contradict his Dodo rant by putting pigeons as the sister group to the New World vultures and the Dodos as the sister group to that clade. And this is only scratching the surface, mind you. I'd heard about David Peters' weird-ass theories on Pterosaurs before, but man, this almost qualifies as Dadaist art. |
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| Ulquiorra | Mar 15 2018, 05:29 PM Post #8 |
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To add yet more confusion, the Crested honey buzzard, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_honey_buzzard It might just be me, but it kind of looks like a hybrid of a pigeon and some species of hawk, mostly the head. Edited by Ulquiorra, Mar 15 2018, 05:32 PM.
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| Jannick | Mar 15 2018, 05:50 PM Post #9 |
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Papua merdeka!
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The typical, "pigeon-like" face of Honey buzzards is actually because of the tough, scale-like feathers on their face that protect their skin from wasp and bee stings
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| stargatedalek | Mar 15 2018, 06:51 PM Post #10 |
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!
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It's also only distantly related to vultures, it doesn't look that different from kites which it's closest related to. |
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| Whalebite | Mar 15 2018, 07:18 PM Post #11 |
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Geat, Peters is done with sail backed vampire pterosaurs and is moving to make a mess understanding birds. I like how birds of prey are all in a clade by themselves that separated before hesperornis and icthyornus, probably going to claim they direct evolved from Velociraptor. As clarified by many Baby pigeons have a remarkable similarity to the dodo. I used to work with pigeons and there was this once chick which never grew had feathers, and we called vulture pigeon, because it really did look like a little black vulture. Also the Tooth billed pigeon looks quite similar to a dodo in the face, and does not have a typical pigeon face. Mascarine animals are rather strange, the red rail looks quite different from most rails on the surface, people thought it was a kiwi (bet that is Peters next claim), the reason why no other pigeons exhibit the body of a dodo, is no others are a dominate ground herbivore in their habitat. The Crowned pigeons are competing with mammals, and other sutable islands had their own giant avian herbivores, they also have/had land predators that the mascarine islands lacked. Lots of places that supported large pigeons in the pacific also supported Mekosuchine crocodiles until recently, so they needed to retain flight (although sylviornis and the moas survived along side them, so I my claim is probably not actually true) But I think the lack of recent work really tells you all you need to know. You can claim anything when you have a lack of data. I am really curious if their is an actual Dan Peters following, and who they are. Note: he appears to be claiming they are related to New World Vultures not those found in the old world. Edited by Whalebite, Mar 15 2018, 07:32 PM.
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| regional_at_best | Mar 15 2018, 07:53 PM Post #12 |
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Yeah, I get what you guys are saying. I have to admit, Peters' posts are kinda fun to read, but I understand that he's probably not that credible at all. I find it enjoyable to read different evolution theories, even if they are far from the scientific truth. Now, what's this about sail-backed pterosaurs? I wanna see his theory on that lmao, sounds ridiculous. |
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| heliosphoros | Mar 15 2018, 09:07 PM Post #13 |
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What he did to birds is nothing compared with what he does to mammals. He takes multituberculates being convergent with rodents at face value (in spite of the fact that being bucktoothed is literally where all similarities end) and thinks Volaticotherium is a marsupial, among odder things. |
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