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Craniofacial morphogenesis demands coordinated outgrowth of spatially‐separated facial prominences. Underscoring this complex choreography, 1/3 of all human birth defects affect craniofacial development. Both orofacial clefting and malocclusions are common birth abnormalities that affect the midface. During midfacial development, regulatory genes control the dynamics of transcriptional activity, tissue patterning, and intercellular signaling to modulate the timing of morphogenetic and growth processes. Variation in these dynamics underlies both evolutionary divergence in midfacial outgrowth and the etiology of craniofacial birth defects. In non‐avians, the main variable driving species‐specific midfacial length is the maxilla of the upper jaw, while in avians it is the premaxilla. Also, avians have cleft palate in physiological conditions. Despite the availability of datasets of regulatory elements from craniofacial …