| rdfs:comment | - The coraciiforms of our timeline are a diverse group, even though their number of species is relatively small. Assuming this clade does not turn out to be paraphyletic, Coraciiformes include the pickpeckers(Driostrids), the rollers (Coraciidae), the ground-rollers (Brachypteraciidae) and cuckoo-rollers (Leptosomidae), the todies (Todidae), the motmots (Momotidae), the practically cosmopolitan kingfishers (Alcedinidae), the ancient bee-eaters (Meropidae) of the Old World, the African scimitar-bills (Phoeniculidae) and hoopoes (Upupidae), and the hornbills (Bucerotidae), which could be confused with toucans of either timeline.
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| abstract | - The coraciiforms of our timeline are a diverse group, even though their number of species is relatively small. Assuming this clade does not turn out to be paraphyletic, Coraciiformes include the pickpeckers(Driostrids), the rollers (Coraciidae), the ground-rollers (Brachypteraciidae) and cuckoo-rollers (Leptosomidae), the todies (Todidae), the motmots (Momotidae), the practically cosmopolitan kingfishers (Alcedinidae), the ancient bee-eaters (Meropidae) of the Old World, the African scimitar-bills (Phoeniculidae) and hoopoes (Upupidae), and the hornbills (Bucerotidae), which could be confused with toucans of either timeline. Readers are, by this point, probably waiting for a sentence along the lines of: "In Spec, the situation is different." Strangely, however, Spec's coraciiform evolution has been very similar to that of our timeline. Certainly, todies, rollers and hornbills have never evolved in Spec, because their ecological niches are already occupied by jaubs, cacklers and scytherbills; but Spec's p-Coraciiformes contains the nearcrows (Parabrachypteraciidae) and the kingfishers (p-Alcedinidae), which are very similar in shape, diet and distribution to their Home-Earth counterparts. The order Coraciiformes began, as a group of generalist ground birds very much like the modern Brachypteraciidae (the ground-roller assemblage), and quickly diversified into a number of forms. Coraciiforms evolved, as most of the earth-familiar birds did, in the southern hemisphere, but quickly spread north. By the middle Eocene, the coraciiforms were arguably the most diverse of the bird orders, and certainly enjoyed a wide range, with representatives in South America, North America, and Eurasia. The coraciiforms did not make the march toward world domination unopposed, however. Nearly all of the avian groups from home-Earth (of which Coraciiformes is one) are descended from a Gondwanan assemblage that escaped the destruction wreaked upon the Northern Hemisphere by the Chicxulub boloid. On the Specworld, where the extinction never took place, the northern bird lineages were there to meet the coraciiforms.
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