Pangalliformes
| Pangalliformes | |
|---|---|
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| |
| Male grey junglefowl, Gallus sonneratii | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Superorder: | Galloanserae |
| Clade: | Pangalliformes Clarke, 2004 |
| Subgroups | |
| Synonyms | |
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Pangalliformes is the scientific name of a provisional
Galloanserae. It is defined as all birds more closely related to chickens than to ducks, and includes all modern chickens, turkeys, pheasants, and megapodes, as well as extinct species that do not fall within the crown group Galliformes
.
A few fragmentary
basal lineages of galliforms.[2]
Additional galliform-like pangalliformes are represented by
extinct families from the Paleogene, namely the Gallinuloididae, Paraortygidae and Quercymegapodiidae. In the early Cenozoic
, some additional birds may or may not be early Galliformes, though even if they are, it is rather unlikely that these belong to extant families:
- †Argillipes (London Clay Early Eocene of England)
- †Coturnipes (Early Eocene of England, and Virginia, USA?)
- †Paleophasianus (Willwood Early Eocene of Bighorn County, USA)
- †Percolinus (London Clay Early Eocene of England)
- †"Palaeorallus" alienus (middle Oligocene of Tatal-Gol, Mongolia)
- †Anisolornis (Santa Cruz Middle Miocene of Karaihen, Argentina)
More recently, it has been discovered that Sylviornis and its sister taxa, Megavitiornis, lay outside the Galliformes crown group.[3] This same study also presents Dromornithidae as possibly closer to Galliformes than to Anseriformes as traditionally expected, though it acknowledges more work to be needed in this field.
References
Further reading
- Agnolin, Federico L.; Novas, Fernando E. & Lio, Gabriel (2006): Neornithine bird coracoid from the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia. Ameghiniana 43(1): 245–248. HTML fulltext
- Clarke, Julia A. (2004): Morphology, Phylogenetic Taxonomy, and Systematics of Ichthyornis and Apatornis (Avialae: Ornithurae). Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 286: 1–179 PDF fulltext
