Editing Vulture (section)

== Taxonomy ==
Although [[New World vulture]]s and [[Old World vulture]]s share many resemblances, they are not very closely related. Rather, they share resemblance because of [[convergent evolution]].<ref>Phillips (2000)</ref>

Early naturalists placed all vultures under one single biological group. [[Carl Linnaeus]] had assigned both Old World vultures and New World vultures in a ''Vultur'' [[genus]], even including the [[harpy eagle]]. Soon anatomists split Old and New World vultures, with New World vultures being placed in a new suborder, ''Cathartae'', later renamed ''[[New World vulture|Cathartidae]]'' as per the [[Nomenclature codes|Rules of Nomenclature]] (from [[Greek language|Greek]]: ''carthartes'', meaning "purifier")<ref>Brookes (2006)</ref> by French ornithologist [[Frédéric de Lafresnaye]].<ref>{{Cite book|title=Notes on the Taxonomy of Vultures The Condor Vol. 79, No. 4|year=1977|pages=413–416}}</ref> The suborder was later recognised as a family, rather than a suborder.

In the late 20th century, some ornithologists argued that New World vultures are more closely related to [[stork]]s on the basis of [[karyotype]],<ref>de Boer (1975)</ref> morphological,<ref>Ligon (1967)</ref> and behavioral<ref>König (1982)</ref> data. Thus some authorities placed them in [[Ciconiiformes]] with [[stork]]s and [[heron]]s; Sibley and Monroe (1990) even considered them a subfamily of the storks. This was criticized,<ref>Griffiths (1994)</ref><ref>Fain & Houde (2004)</ref> and an early DNA sequence study<ref>Avise (1994)</ref> was based on erroneous data and subsequently retracted.<ref>Brown (2009)</ref><ref>Cracraft ''et al.'' (2004)</ref><ref>Gibb ''et al.'' (2007)</ref> There was then an attempt to raise the New World vultures to the rank of an independent order, Cathartiformes, not closely associated with either the birds of prey or the storks and herons.<ref>Ericson ''et al.'' (2006)</ref>