Ailuroedus Amblyornis Archboldia Chlamydera Prionodura Ptilonorhynchus Scenopoeetes Sericulus Bowerbirds (/ˈbaʊ.ərbɜːrd/) make up the bird family Ptilonorhynchidae.

They are renowned for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a mate.

[2] The satin[3] and spotted bowerbirds[4] are sometimes considered agricultural pests due to their habit of feeding on introduced fruit and vegetable crops and have occasionally been killed by affected orchardists.

Female bowerbirds build a nest by laying soft materials, such as leaves, ferns, and vine tendrils, on top of a loose foundation of sticks.

[21] Evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from observations of Archbold's bowerbirds that have no true bower and have greatly modified their courtship so that the male is limited in his ability to mount the female without her cooperation.

It also provides some of the most compelling evidence that the extended phenotype of a species can play a role in sexual selection and indeed, act as a powerful mechanism to shape its evolution, as seems to be the case for humans.

They arrange objects in the bower's court area from smallest to largest, creating a forced perspective which holds the attention of the female for longer.

DNA–DNA hybridization studies placed them close to the lyrebirds;[29] however, anatomical evidence appears to contradict this placement,[30] and the true relationship remained unresolved for long.

But the hypothesized relationships of 3 roughly equally distinct groups and one peculiar species inferred from courtship behaviour and external appearance are by and large confirmed by molecular phylogenetics, .

As it turned out, this is not only correct, but in fact the Tooth-billed catbird is robustly resolved by the mtDNA data as more closely related to the "maypole"-type bower builders than to Ailuroedus, and certainly warrants separation in genus Scenopoeetes.

Also, the enigmatic "maypole-builder" genus Archboldia seems to be merely a Amblyornis with unusually heavy melanin pigmentation as is often found in tropical rainforest birds.

Even so, it is precisely this uncertainty about inter-group relationships that strongly suggests that the "maypole"/"avenue" bowers are not one ancestral and one derived type, but evolved independent of one another, perhaps from a "clean stage"-type courtship arena which is commonly established by all bower-building species at the start of bower construction, and persists in little-altered form (just adding some remarkable leaves strewn about as decoration) in Scenopoeetes which almost certainly is the most ancient living lineage of the "maypole-builders".

It was found in Faunal Zone A deposits of the White Hunter Site at D-site Plateau of the Riversleigh World Heritage Area.

Thus, the fossil species may have belonged to a more basal and now entirely extinct lineage, and/or it may be considered to support the hypothesis that the "avenue-builders" are the most ancient group of bowerbirds and retain many "primitive" features in their anatomy.

This has not been named, as it is only known from the distal left ulna piece QM F57970 (AR19857), also found on the D-site Plateau of Riversleigh WHA, but in interval 3 of Faunal Zone B at the Ross Scott-Orr site, in late early Miocene (Burdigalian) sediments dated to 16.55 mya.

Even though this piece of fossil bone is merely some 16 mm long, it is excellently preserved, and its features are characteristic of a smallish bowerbird the size of a black-eared catbird.

Bowerbird ulnae – to the extent they have been studied – differ little between genera and species, but the Miocene fossil is unlike all living members of the family in one detail or another.