Decoding the tree of life: UF geneticist contributes to groundbreaking study of bird evolution

Nature abhors a vacuum, which may explain the findings of a new study showing that bird evolution exploded 65 million years ago when nearly everything else on earth — dinosaurs included — died out.

The study is part of an ambitious project, published in the Dec. 12 issue of the journal Science, in which hundreds of scientists worldwide have decoded the avian genome.