Monday, February 2, 2026

Review of 2025

Ugh... is it being fashionably late to post a year-end retrospective in February? I suppose I've never been a fashionable sort anyway, so I will settle for plain old late. Three papers I co-authored were published last year, including a study on the embryonic development of galloanseran skulls, a comparison of mandibular morphology among early crown-group birds, and (most notably for me) a nearly 90-page treatise on the phylogenetic utility of the avian wing skeleton. I would have liked to write about all of this research on here, but... to put it simply, amidst the many professional and personal happenings as of late, making time for this blog has been very challenging. I also wanted to review Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, which came out in November of last year, much like I did for the Mesozoic seasons. Alas. At least I was able to assemble a Bluesky thread on the birds featured in the series. Another consequence of my preoccupations (among other things) was that my co-host Joan and I decided to put our podcast Through Time and Clades into retirement.

Pectoral girdle and forelimb bones of the Australian owlet-nightjar, one of the 75 modern bird species we examined in Chen et al. (2025). (Scale bar = 5 mm. Photo of the live bird is not to scale.)

Given that I'm here though, the least I can do is uphold the tradition of looking back on the past year in maniraptoran research. As always, my coverage of papers about modern birds is necessarily going to be incomplete, so I put more focus on those that have more direct connections to paleontology, such as studies on anatomy, ontogeny, and higher-order phylogeny. 

General and non-paravian maniraptorans

Select bones and schematic skeletal of Duonychus tsogtbaatari, from Kobayashi et al. (2025).

General and non-neornithean paravians

Holotype of Shri rapax, from Moutrille et al. (2025).

Avialan fossils from the Prince Creek Formation, from Wilson et al. (2025).

General and miscellaneous crown birds

Chart showing that wing and hindlimb bone proportions are more tightly interlinked in precocial than in altricial birds, from Orkney et al. (2025).

Wings of embryonic chickens showing developing feathers, from Cooper and Milinkovitch (2025). When feather development is inhibited (B–D), the feathers become shorter and lack branches.

Graphs showing that small migratory birds fly higher during desert crossings than sea crossings, and how flight altitude correlates with morphology, from Dufour et al. (2026).

Skull of Vegavis, from Torres et al. (2025).

Paleognaths

A slaty-masked tinamou, from Morais et al. (2025).

Galloanserans

Holotype of Gracilisgallus linxia, from Yu and Li (2025).

Miscellaneous neoavians

Phylogeny of pigeons showing the position of the blue-headed quail-dove, from Oswald et al. (2025).

Cursorimorphs

Phaethoquornitheans

Plotopterid skull from the Lincoln Creek Formation, from Mayr et al. (2025).

Strisoreans

Telluravians

Northern harrier in foraging flight, photographed by Bob Bowhay, from Citron et al. (2025).

Holotype of Consoravis turdirostris, from Ksepka et al. (2025).

Phylogenetic distribution of hidden black and white feather layers that enhance bright colors in passeriforms, from Price-Waldman et al. (2025).

Phylogeny and rates of skull evolution in vangas, from Auerbach et al. (2025).

Phylogeny of songbirds showing correlation between cavity nesting and territorial aggression, from Lipshutz et al. (2025).

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