THE BASHING MUST STOP - MOJO IS OUTRAGED

Hi All,
The following, just in from the Grand Duchy of Le Titfly, regarding the outrageous comments being made about our incipient Psittaciform Logo.

Researchers are still unsure about the origins of The Psittaciformes. Diversity among Psittaciformes in South America and Australasia suggests that the order may have come from Gondwanaland, with the center found in Australasia. The scarcity of the bird's fossil record, however, may cause difficulty in proving this.


A single 15 mm fragment from a large lower bill, found in deposits from the Carolinskaya region, is thought to be the oldest Psittaciform fossil and is presumed to have originated from the Late Cretaceous period, which makes it about 70 million years old. There have been studies, that establish that this fossil is almost certainly from a bird, of the genus caenagnathid theropod or an avian dinosaur with a birdlike beak definitely originating from the Carolinskaya area; thus establishing a direct line of descent parallel to that of the Ducal Suzerains, back into the farthest Neolithic periods, predating even The Le Titfly warlords.


It is now generally assumed that the Psittaciformes or their common ancestors with a number of related bird orders were present somewhere in the world around the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, some 65 million years ago. If so, they probably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, but were generalized arboreal birds, roughly similar (though not necessarily closely related) to today's potoos or frogmouths.


Europe is the origin of the first generally accepted Psittaciform fossils. The first is a wingbone of Mopsitta tanta, uncovered in Denmark and dated to 54 million years ago. The climate at this time was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Later fossils date from the Eocene, starting around 50 million years ago. Several fairly complete skeletons of Psittaciform-like birds have been found in England and Germany. Some uncertainty remains, but on the whole it seems more likely that these are not direct ancestors of the modern Psittaciformes, but related lineages which evolved in the Northern Hemisphere but have since died out. These are probably not "missing links" between ancestral and modern Psittaciformes, but rather psittaciform lineages that evolved parallel to true parrots and cockatoos and had their own peculiar autapomorphies.

In short, MOJO represents a noble class of creature and we would be greatly honored to have him grace our BLOG Site.

Dave Israel