Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 July 1

= July 1 =

What are the defining characteristics of the bird clade “telluraves” + what distinguishes birds in its subclade “australaves” from the other subclade, “afroaves”?
Quickly saying, I asked here because the references are far too complex to understand, and the Wikipedia pages don’t list defining characteristics. 38.23.177.112 (talk) 03:09, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * This paper says, "No morphological apomorphies are known", which I guess means it's just molecular. Abductive  (reasoning) 06:47, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * One reason with I hate phylogeny… without distinguishing traits, how can clades be properly defined?
 * Am I the only person who hates phylogeny for this particular reason? 38.23.177.112 (talk) 10:22, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm sure it bugs many people. But one can only hate phylogeny if one cares about phylogeny. And unless one is publishing scientific articles in the field, hating it will accomplish nothing. Abductive  (reasoning) 21:04, 1 July 2024 (UTC)
 * I suspect that hating phylogeny will accomplish very little also for people publishing scientific articles in the field. --Lambiam 18:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)