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48 Birds

An international collaboration of more than 200 scientists has published the first results of whole-genome comparisons across all 48 orders of the Bird family tree. The analysis shows just a few species of birds survived the K-T mass extinction event 66 million years ago and then experienced a rapid diversification of new species as birds adapted to unfilled niches in the environment. All images and sound from Wikimedia Commons and Xeno-Canto.org under Creative Commons license.