| | Roberts VII Taxonomic Sequence |
 | | This is exciting for southern hemisphere birders, because it implies that all passerines evolved in the south, around the time of the break up of Gondwanaland, some 80-85 million years ago. |
 | | The new studies also rearrange several passerine families, for example placing larks as sister to the Cisticolidae. |
 | | Although it is early days, the concordance in overall structure revealed by the two studies argues that the structure inferred by Keith Barker and his colleagues likely is closer to the true evolutionary history of the passerines than that proposed by Sibley and Ahlquist. |
| web.uct.ac.za /depts/fitzpatrick/docs/birdord.html (616 words) |