Alan Feduccia

John Alan Feduccia (born 25 April 1943) is a paleornithologist, specializing in the origins and phylogeny of birds. He is now Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. Feduccia's principal authored works include two books, The Age of Birds and The Origin and Evolution of Birds, and numerous papers in various ornithological and biological journals. Feduccia opposes the widely held view that birds originated from and are deeply nested within Theropoda, and are therefore living theropod dinosaurs. He has argued for an alternative theory in which birds share a common stem-ancestor with theropod dinosaurs among more basal archosaurian lineages, with birds originating from small arboreal archosaurs in the Triassic.

Feduccia graduated with a B.S. from Louisiana State University, taking ornithological expeditions to Honduras, El Salvador and Peru. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. (1969) from the University of Michigan.

Feduccia's research has focused on ornithology, evolutionary biology, vertebrate history and morphogenesis, and the tempo and mode of the Cenozoic vertebrate radiation. His early work in the 1970s focused on clarification of the evolutionary history of modern birds (Neornithes), focusing, in particular, on the importance of the identification of conserved morphological characters that might elucidate phylogeny more readily than more functionally correlated characters. Using this approach, in a series of publications, Feduccia analyzed the morphology of the bony stapes, the ear ossicle of birds, to help elucidate the interrelationships of passeriform birds. This approach was extended to the analysis of non-passeriform birds as well, including owls and the shoebill, also known as the whalebill (Balaeniceps rex). Other studies in the 1970s focused on the analysis of the Cenozoic avian radiation, with a particular focus on the origin and relationships of waterfowl Anseriformes. Based on his analysis of the osteology of the Paleocene and Eocene duck Presbyornis, represented in large quantities from Eocene deposits from outcrops of the Green River Formation in Utah and Wyoming, Feduccia concluded that Presbyornis represents a shorebird-duck mosaic and that waterfowl evolved from shorebirds (Charadriiformes). This is contrary to the more widely held view that waterfowl are most closely related to chickens, turkeys, and related fowl (Galliformes), but Feduccia argues that this alternative phylogeny is unsupported by fossil evidence, and he suggests that any similarities between anseriform and galliform birds are attributable to homoplasy. Partly based on his analysis of the osteology of Presbyornis, Feduccia also argued that flamingos, the phylogenetic relationships of which remain disputed, with some recent studies suggesting a sister-group relationship with grebes, were actually derived from shorebirds. Feduccia summarized his position in the second edition of his book The Origin and Evolution of Birds: "The study of Presbyornis planted the idea that shorebirds are the basic ancestral stock for both flamingolike birds and the anseriformes, ducks and their allies...".

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