Origins and evolution[edit]

Blue-and-yellow macaw eating a walnut held in its foot

Psittaciform diversity in South America and Australasia suggests that the order
may have evolved in Gondwanaland, centred in Australasia.[7] The scarcity of par
rots in the fossil record, however, presents difficulties in confirming the hypo
thesis.
A single 15 mm (0.6 in) fragment from a large lower bill (UCMP 143274), found in
deposits from the Lance Creek Formation in Niobrara County, Wyoming, had been t
hought to be the oldest parrot fossil and is presumed to have originated from th
e Late Cretaceous period, which makes it about 70 Ma (million years ago).[8] Oth
er studies suggest that this fossil is not from a bird, but from a caenagnathid
theropod or a non-avian dinosaur with a birdlike beak.[9][10]
It is now generally assumed that the Psittaciformes, or their common ancestors w
ith several related bird orders, were present somewhere in the world around the
Cretaceous Paleogene extinction event (K-Pg extinction), some 66 Ma. If so, they p
robably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, but were general
ised arboreal birds, roughly similar (though not necessarily closely related) to
today's potoos or frogmouths (see also Palaeopsittacus below). Though these bir
ds (Cypselomorphae) are a phylogenetically challenging group, they seem at least
closer to the parrot ancestors than, for example, the modern aquatic birds (Aeq
uornithes). The combined evidence supported the hypothesis of Psittaciformes bei
ng "near passerines", i.e. the mostly land-living birds that emerged in close pr
oximity to the K-Pg extinction. Indeed, analysis of transposable element inserti
ons observed in the genomes of passerines and parrots, but not in the genomes of
other birds, provides strong evidence that parrots are the sister group of pass
erines, forming a clade Psittacopasserae, to the exclusion of the next closest g
roup, the falcons.[11]
Europe is the origin of the first undeniable parrot fossils, which date from abo
ut 50 Ma. The climate there and then was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene
-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Initially, a neoavian named Mopsitta tanta, uncovered i
n Denmark's Early Eocene Fur Formation and dated to 54 Ma, was assigned to the P
sittaciformes; it was described from a single humerus.[12] However, the rather n
ondescript bone is not unequivocally psittaciform, and more recently it was poin
ted out that it may rather belong to a newly discovered ibis of the genus Rhynch
aeites, whose fossil legs were found in the same deposits.