Australaves
clade of birds (Aves)
Australaves is a clade of birds defined in 2012, consisting of the Eufalconimorphae (passerines, parrots and falcons) as well as the Cariamiformes (including seriemas and the extinct "terror birds"). They appear to be the sister group of Afroaves. This clade was defined in the PhyloCode by George Sangster and colleagues in 2022 as "the least inclusive crown clade containing Cariama cristata and Passer domesticus".
Location
The clade's name, meaning 'southern birds', reflects the group's evolutionary origins in the Southern Hemisphere: passerines and parrots in Australia, and falcons and seriemas in South America.
As in the case of Afroaves, the most basal clades have predatory extant members, suggesting this was the ancestral lifestyle; however, some researchers like Darren Naish are skeptical of this assessment, since some extinct representatives such as the herbivorous Strigogyps led other lifestyles. Basal parrots and falcons are at any rate vaguely crow-like and probably omnivorous.
Phylogeny
Cladogram of Telluraves relationships based on Kuhl et al.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Australaves” is clade of birds (Aves). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Australaves, clade and birds, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14635103. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2022.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Australaves” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.