Origins and Taxonomy
The previous view that the Megaceryle kingfishers arose in the New World from a specialist fish-eating Alcedinid ancestor which crossed the Bering Strait and gave rise to this genus and the American green kingfishers Chloroceryle, with a large crested species later, in the Pliocene, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to give rise to the Giant and Crested Kingfishers (Fry & Fry, 2000) is probably wrong. Rather, it now seems that the genus probably originates in the Old World, possibly Africa, and the ancestor of the Belted and Ringed Kingfishers made the ocean crossing (Moyle, 2006).
The Megaceryle kingfishers were formerly placed in Ceryle with the Pied Kingfisher, but the latter is genetically closer to the American green kingfishers.
Read more about this topic: Megaceryle
Famous quotes containing the words origins and and/or origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)