Secular Café: Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low May 24th 2012, 10:28 Turtles are a kind of bird with the governor turned low. - Edward Hoagland from "The Courage of Turtles" Quote: Turtles More Closely Related to Birds Than Lizards and Snakes, Genetic Evidence Shows ScienceDaily (May 23, 2012) — The evolutionary origin of turtles is one of the last unanswered questions in vertebrate evolution. Paleontological and morphological studies place turtles as either evolving from the ancestor of all reptiles or as evolving from the ancestor of snakes, lizards, and tuataras. Conflictingly, genetic studies place turtles as evolving from the ancestor of crocodilians and birds. Having recently looked at more than a thousand of the least-changed regions in the genomes of turtles and their closest relatives, a team of Boston University researchers has confirmed that turtles are most closely related to crocodilians and birds rather than to lizards, snakes, and tuataras. The researchers published their findings in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. By showing that turtles are closer relatives to crocodiles and birds (archosaurs) than lizards, snakes and tuatara (lepidosaurs), the study challenges previous anatomical and paleontological assessments. Nick Crawford, a post-graduate researcher in biology in BU's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and lead author of the study, achieved these findings by using computational analysis to examine regions of the different animals' genomes. "Turtles have been an enigmatic vertebrate group for a long time and morphological studies placed them as either most closely related to the ancestral reptiles, that diverged early in the reptile evolutionary tree, or as closer to lizards, snakes, and tuataras," says Crawford. The study is the first genomic-scale analysis addressing the phylogenetic position of turtles, using over 1000 loci from representatives of all major reptile lineages including tuatara (lizard-like reptiles found only in New Zealand). Earlier studies of morphological traits positioned turtles at the base of the reptile tree with lizards, snakes and tuatara (lepidosaurs), whereas molecular analyses typically allied turtles with crocodiles and birds (archosaurs). .... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0523200301.htm and the Edward Hoagland essay if anyone is interested: "The Courage of Turtles" - http://www.cwu.edu/~garrisop/makeup_quiz_essays.pdf

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