page_title: Passenger pigeon
section_title: Evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Passenger pigeon / Taxonomy / Evolution
caption_attribution_description: Ectopistes migratorius (Linnaeus, 1766) - passenger pigeon (extinct) (mount, public display, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ilinois, USA). The story of the passenger pigeon is famous as an example of the idiotic destructive power of modern man ("Homo stupidus") &amp; human overpopulation. The passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, was at one time the # 1 most abundant bird in North America, and likely the # 1 most abundant bird on Earth. The species became extinct about 100 years ago. The last known individual was a captive bird held at the Cincinnati Zoo. It died at 1 PM on 1 September 1914. It is the only species whose extinction timing is very well known. Ectopistes migratorius occupied the central &amp; eastern portions of temperate North America. It was driven to extinction by professional hunters (the birds were destined for food markets - American Indians also killed these birds as a source of food) and clear-cutting of forests. Passenger pigeon flocks were famously huge - they darkened skies and took hours to fly by. Their droppings fell like snow. Individual flocks were estimated to have contained more than three billion birds. Flock density was so high that when two flocks flying in opposite directions collided, numerous stunned birds fell to the ground. Passenger pigeons nested in huge colonies, occupying hundreds of square miles of forests. Single trees could have hundreds of nests. Tree branches were seen to break from the weight of all the perching birds. Late 1800s hunters targeted the nesting colony areas. Oddly, passenger pigeons couldn’t nest alone or in small colonies. With the destruction of the nesting colonies, the species couldn’t make a comeback. The passenger pigeon is the only species in the pigeon/dove family driven to extinction by gun nerds. However, several other birds in this family, usually island species, have gone also extinct due to other human factors. The Lesson? Natural resources can run out. (think oil as well) Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Columbiformes, Columbidae Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic &amp; rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic &amp; rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either. However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.
context_page_description: The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon is an extinct species of pigeon that was endemic to North America. Its common name is derived from the French word passager, meaning "passing by", due to the migratory habits of the species. The scientific name also refers to its migratory characteristics. The morphologically similar mourning dove was long thought to be its closest relative, and the two were at times confused, but genetic analysis has shown that the genus Patagioenas is more closely related to it than the Zenaida doves.
  The passenger pigeon was sexually dimorphic in size and coloration. The male was 390 to 410 mm in length, mainly gray on the upperparts, lighter on the underparts, with iridescent bronze feathers on the neck, and black spots on the wings. The female was 380 to 400 mm, and was duller and browner than the male overall. The juvenile was similar to the female, but without iridescence. It mainly inhabited the deciduous forests of eastern North America and was also recorded elsewhere, but bred primarily around the Great Lakes.
context_section_description: The passenger pigeon was a member of the pigeon and dove family, Columbidae. The oldest known fossil of the genus is an isolated humerus (USNM 430960) known from the Lee Creek Mine in North Carolina in sediments belonging to the Yorktown Formation, dating to the Zanclean stage of the Pliocene, between 5.3 and 3.6 million years ago. Its closest living relatives were long thought to be the Zenaida doves, based on morphological grounds, particularly the physically similar mourning dove (now Z. macroura). It was even suggested that the mourning dove belonged to the genus Ectopistes and was listed as E. carolinensis by some authors, including Thomas Mayo Brewer. The passenger pigeon was supposedly descended from Zenaida pigeons that had adapted to the woodlands on the plains of central North America.
  The passenger pigeon differed from the species in the genus Zenaida in being larger, lacking a facial stripe, being sexually dimorphic, and having iridescent neck feathers and a smaller clutch. In a 2002 study by American geneticist Beth Shapiro et al., museum specimens of the passenger pigeon were included in an ancient DNA analysis for the first time (in a paper focusing mainly on the dodo), and it was found to be the sister taxon of the cuckoo-dove genus Macropygia. The Zenaida doves were instead shown to be related to the quail-doves of the genus Geotrygon and the Leptotila doves.
  A more extensive 2010 study instead showed that the passenger pigeon was most closely related to the New World Patagioenas pigeons, including the band-tailed pigeon (P. fasciata) of western North America, which are related to the Southeast Asian species in the genera Turacoena, Macropygia and Reinwardtoena. This clade is also related to the Columba and Streptopelia doves of the Old World (collectively termed the "typical pigeons and doves"). The authors of the study suggested that the ancestors of the passenger pigeon may have colonized the New World from South East Asia by flying across the Pacific Ocean, or perhaps across Beringia in the north.
  In a 2012 study, the nuclear DNA of the passenger pigeon was analyzed for the first time, and its relationship with the Patagioenas pigeons was confirmed. In contrast to the 2010 study, these authors suggested that their results could indicate that the ancestors of the passenger pigeon and its Old World relatives may have originated in the Neotropical region of the New World.
  The cladogram below follows the 2012 DNA study showing the position of the passenger pigeon among its closest relatives:
  DNA in old museum specimens is often degraded and fragmentary, and passenger pigeon specimens have been used in various studies to discover improved methods of analyzing and assembling genomes from such material. DNA samples are often taken from the toe pads of bird skins in museums, as this can be done without causing significant damage to valuable specimens. The passenger pigeon had no known subspecies. Hybridization occurred between the passenger pigeon and the Barbary dove (Streptopelia risoria) in the aviary of Charles Otis Whitman (who owned many of the last captive birds around the turn of the 20th century, and kept them with other pigeon species) but the offspring were infertile.
caption: Mounted male passenger pigeon, Field Museum of Natural History
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