This page lists living orders and families of birds, class Aves. The links below should then lead to family accounts and hence to individual species.
Taxonomy is very fluid in the age of DNA analysis, so comments are made where appropriate, and all numbers are approximate. In particular see Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy for a very different classification.
Birds are categorised as a biological class, Aves. The earliest known species of this class is Archaeopteryx lithographica, from the Late Jurassic period. According to the most recent consensus, Aves and a sister group, the order Crocodilia, together form a group of unnamed rank, the Archosauria.
An Osprey
