I am curious about the evolution and relationship of centrarchidae with the rest of percidae. I see taxonomic trees before of various centrarchids themselves in several variations (usually changing based on where they decide to place the mud sunfish and sacremento perch).

But the origin, relations, and evolution of centrarchidae itself is puzzling me, from what I read the oldest known fossil is of a modern species (redear) so their is no clear tree as to what they evolved from and why they are only found in the US and not circumpolar like most other northern hemisphere fish groups. (some exceptions of fish groups, like gar, are shown to have been circumpolar in the fossil record but only found in the US now).

Which periformes are most closely related to centrarchidae? what group are they thought to have evolved from (hopefully their is a group and not an annoying "common ancestor, nonspecies", yes that makes perfect sense for groups with relatively poor fossil records which sunfish would fall into, but when used on well known groups with a relatively complete record it annoys me, go out into the wild and find me a generic placeholder nonspecies.)

Here's a paper I also posted in the Elassoma thread: Li et al 2009. The short answer would seem to be: it isn't clear how Centrarchidae is related to other perciforms, or whether Perciformes should even be recognized any more.