In December 2014, the Avian Phylogenomics Project published a genomic phylogeny of 34 avian orders. The Bird 10,000 Genomes Project is now well underway on Phase 2: sequencing genomes from approximately 300 bird families and subfamilies. Progress towards the ultimate goal of sequencing every avian family, genus, and eventually, species, is tracked here.

As of July 5, 2017, B10K is processing 2,500 samples, representing 2,400 species from 1,370 genera, 300 families, and 36 orders.

B10K announces the completion of its second milestone—the release of genomes representing 92% of all bird families in Nature on 12th November 2020 as cover story. In this study, researchers reported the genomes of for 363 bird species including 267 new genomes, established a new pipeline to analyze the unprecedented scale of genomic data, and illustrated how these resources give improved resolution on genomic evolution analyses. (Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2873-9). Based on this data, we reconstructed a new family tree and resolved several long-standing debates on bird phylogeny. The new tree was published in Nature on April 1st 2024.