themyskira: Here’s something I didn’t know until yesterday: all of the world’s son
themyskira:Here’s something I didn’t know until yesterday: all of the world’s songbirds can be traced back to Australia. Or, at least, a western portion of the supercontinent Gondwana, which would become Australia.The evidence has been there for us to find, but for over two centuries it was simply assumed that Australia’s songbirds were descended from Northern Hemisphere ancestors. When in the 1980s Australian scientists first floated evidence that the opposite was true – that all the songbirds of the Northern Hemisphere originated in Australia – they were laughed at. But over the next couple of decades, mounting evidence from DNA and fossil studies proved them right.Australia was the birthplace of all of today’s songbirds, pigeons and parrots, and knowing this helps to explain some things about our own native birds. Compared to those of other continents, Australian birds are more likely to be intelligent, loud, aggressive, melodious, socially cooperative and environmentally influential. In part, that’s because they had an evolutionary head start on the rest of the world. -- source link
#ahaha incredible