The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs also wiped out all songbirds, except for in (ark) Australia. Australian songbirds then spread out to rest of the planet.
The closest living descendents (aka basal lineages) are the Lyrebird and the Rufus scrub bird. The lyrebird’s song is a mixture of its own song and other birds songs. They have been also been known to mimic chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, and human speech.
To be fair, all birds who went extinct back then also still had a common ancestor somewhere, all life on earth does.
There’s plenty of convergent evolution. Plants keep evolving into trees, so there isn’t a single origin for them. Crustaceans keep evolving into crabs.
Always and eternal is the carsinisation cycle. One glorious day we too will realize the optimal form and shuffle sideways into Nirvana. Together, as a species, we will snip the ties of suffering that bind us to this samsara.
Craaab people, craaab people♫
There’s a single origin for everything. It doesn’t matter how many times the descendants of that common ancestor have diverged and reconverged.
- You’re talking about a different subject than me.
- There’s no consensus for what you’re saying.
1: You’re talking about whether a common ancestor exists for all life, I’m talking about common ancestor for a trait (e.g. tree bark, bird song, these are traits and not organisms).
2: There’s current debate on whether life emerged multiple times or if it was only once. There’s evidence for both and it’s not a settled debate.
- If that’s so, then that’s not what you said. You said “plants keep evolving into trees”. While it’s true that we give the name “trees” to a variety of plants with different genetics, all of them share a common ancestor: otherwise they wouldn’t be plants but something else.
So, what about Australia made all the birds sing?
screaming out of anxiety at all the stuff that can kill them.
but in a pretty soprano voice
That’s nice and all for a science or bird community. Not here, though.
