Australia is home to one in 10 of the world’s unique bird
species – and most of the world’s birds can trace their lineage to the
continent
Friday 1 December 2017 02.05 GMTLast modified on
Friday 1 December 2017 06.19 GMT
If you live in Australia, you may not realise how unique and
special the birds around you are. Our continent was perhaps the most important
for the evolution of modern birds, with a majority of the world’s species
tracing their ancestry here.
Long ecologically adrift as an island continent, Australia
benefited through the evolution of a remarkable diversity of fascinating,
colourful, noisy, clever, innovative species of bird.
Australia is home to about 830
species – more if you include neighbouring islands – nearly one
in 10 of the world’s 10,000 or so living bird species. About 45% of these are
endemics, found nowhere else.
We are lucky to have two of the world’s largest and heaviest
birds – the flightless cassowary (which I’m backing in the Bird of
the Year poll#teamcassowary!) and the emu – which are perhaps
the most superficially similar to birds’ dinosaur ancestors. And related
flightless ratites were probably already common across the ancient
supercontinent of Gondwana long before Australia split from Antarctica and
South America.
No comments:
Post a Comment