Unlike most other Cretaceous birds, such as the Hesperornithiformes, Ichthyornithiformes, and Enantiornithiformes, which represent totally extinct lineages (Olson, 1985), the Cretaceous birds of New Jersey are of essentially modern aspect. However, there are no modern families of birds represented in the fauna. The differences among the fossils suggest that at least two orders are represented, but whether any or all of the species can be placed in modern orders is more difficult to say. This stems as much from the unsatisfactory state of the ordinal classification of modern birds (Olson, 1981, 1985), as from the incompleteness of the fossils. There are certain modern birds, for example the Burhinidae, with sufficient similarities to some of the Cretaceous fossils that there would be no problem with associating them in the same ordinal-level taxon, though it would be more difficult to say which other modern families should also be included. The material is too poor to state how many families are represented in the fauna, although if the various members of the “form-family” Graculavidae were better known there can scarcely be any doubt that more than one family would be recognized in this group. Within the Graculavidae from New Jersey there appear to be six genera (_Graculavus_, _Telmatornis_, _Palaeotringa_, _Laornis_, _Anatalavis_, and an unnamed genus). These are diverse, ranging in size from the smallest of the modern Burhinidae to that of a large crane. The very short, robust, curved humeri of _Anatalavis_ indicate some diversity in mode of flight as well. The greatest similarity of most of these forms is to the early Paleogene bird _Presbyornis_, and then to the modern family Burhinidae. Because these two groups are very different in their habits and feeding adaptations we may expect that the various members of the Graculavidae were probably as divergent from one another as are _Presbyornis_ and _Burhinus_, their similarities being almost certainly due to the retention of primitive characters. Including the two genera and species that show some similarities to the Procellariiformes, along with the small indeterminate femur, the total avifauna from the New Jersey greensands comprises 8 or 9 genera and 9 or 10 species. As far as can be determined, all of the birds in this assemblage were probably marine or littoral in habits. We certainly would not interpret this as indicating that waterbirds are primitive and that they gave rise to land birds, as suggested by Thulborn and Hamley (1985) in their fantastic and highly improbable conjectures as to the mode of life of _Archaeopteryx_. Indeed, just the opposite is probably the case (Olson, 1985), the lack of Late Cretaceous fossils of truly terrestrial or arboreal birds most likely being due to sampling bias. Appendix