today i return with more fucked up animal taxonomy/phylogeny facts.........
these ^ are button quails (genus Turnix). they are small and plump and run around in the grass and eat seeds. they are very quail-like.
HOWEVER.
they are not quail. in fact, they are relatively close relatives of seagulls!
not only are they NOT quail, but the clade they belong to (neoaves) diverged from the clade quail belong to (galloanserae) during the cretaceous period! they last share a common ancestor with quail about 85 million years ago (the exact number is disputed but they definitely diverged before the k-pg extinction event, and likely quite long before that, so somewhere in the realm of abt 70-95 mya)!
in other words
these two birds (actual quail (king quail, Synoicus chinensis) on the left, button quail (madagascar buttonquail, Turnix nigricollis) on the right) last shared a common ancestor around 20 million years before tyrannosaurus rex even existed!!!!!!!!
