Talk:Palaeognathae

Most living paleognath species are flightless?!
"most living paleognath species (all ratites) are flightless". Say what? If there are 47 species of "flying Tinamiformes" and 13 species of flightless Struthioniformes (ratites), that makes only 13 of 60 that are flightless. What am I missing? Nurg 10:37, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Changed "most" to "many", though this section still needs some elaboration and a cite.Dinoguy2 13:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * 22% is not many. I've corrected it. Nurg 06:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Cladogram
I have outcommented the cladograms. A consensus phylogeny for paleognaths simply does not exist, period. We don't know whether the cassowary-emu clade should be treated as family (i.e. as sister to ostriches) or as order (i.e. as sister to ostriches and tinamous) for example. Being unsourced makes it even worse.

The "Systematics and taxonomy" (it's actually only systematics except the "Early Taxonomy" section) part needs to be entirely reworked. What about these moa species? 1/3 of them don't even exist; "Dinornis gazelle" - I guess that should be gazella and it's not a valid species. 4 species of Aepyornis - really? And what good is a link "M. titan"? "Paraphysornis is a phorusrhacid." yeah that's nioce to know, but the article gives no reason why it would have been placed with the ratites (it may well have, but in that case Gastornis is missing). Palaeocursonis a lithornithid? It does not even seem to be neornithine! And Gansus too, how did that get here? It's far more likely that that's an ancestral hesperornithean than a paleognath!

IMHO it is best to accept either many orders (each major ratite clade gets their own) or 2-3 (tinamous and ratites(+)lithornithids) and subdivide the ratites using superfamilies. For there is some structure - when ostrich ancestors split from rhea ancestors, these birds were still flying as far as anyone can tell.

And Wikispecies must not be allowed an opinion on the issue. It uses a phenetic classification for birds in general. Horrible! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:42, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, so with the latest data I have seen, it would be better to treat each lineage as distinct order. But unite emus and cassowaries, and perhaps ostiches and elephantbirds. There is an old paper in Alcheringa with a quite thorough cladistic analysis showing that tinamous have [ta-daaa] rhea-like eggshells. Are we happy? :) I wouldn't unite them, but on the weigth of evidence, treating each large lineage as distinct order is in order I'd guess. We definitely need the leeway this allows us. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 04:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Spelling
I'm an American, so I hate to say this, but isn't the correct, original spelling "Palaeognathae"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.231.222.73 (talk) 23:11, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems to be, now the question is do we vote on a move
 * I think you're right about the superorder name. I'll go ahead and change it. But "Paleognathous" and "paleognath" seem perfectly correct in the scientific nomenclature.Jbrougham (talk) 02:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The correct spelling of this taxon is Palaeognathae; it's a scientific name (latinization); "Paleognathous" and "paleognath" are correct spellings in English. The article must be named Palaeognathae, Paleognathous or paleognath, but not Paleognathae. --Xvazquez (talk) 17:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

"Regional cladogram"
This is in the article but not cited and not mentioned in the text... What in the world is a "regional cladogram" and how is it devised? Is this actually an alternate phylogeny that happens to better reflect geographic distribution? If so it should be labeled as such and sourced. Or is it just an arrangement of species based on region rather than phylogeny? If so it's not a cladogram. Dinoguy2 (talk) 19:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Harshman et al. (2008) and paleognath monophyly
Contrary to what the article claims, the study by Harshman et al. does not conclude that palaeognathae are polyphyletic. Rather, it says:

"Analyses of this dataset support a phylogeny in which paleognaths are monophyletic but ratites are not" (p. 13463)

I have modified the article accordingly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.178.10.137 (talk) 17:59, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe they never learned to fly?
The text doesnt really explain why it isnt possible that the still existing Palaeognathae never learned to fly. Needs expanding. Fig (talk) 23:18, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Go here. 23 million years ago, New Zealand may have been entirely under water.Ericl (talk) 19:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All current studies show that palaeognaths are more closely related to neognaths (flying) than to prehistoric flying birds like Ichthyornis or enantiornithines. So unless dozens of extinct bird groups all learned to fly separately, it is impossible that palaeognaths did not come from flying ancestors. It is more likely that flight evolved a single time in a bird similar to confuciusornis, and that all its ancestors could fly, except a few that became flightless. Study of modern birds shows it is much easier for flightlessness to evolve than for flight to evolve. MMartyniuk (talk) 15:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

NPOV - Gondwana vicariance hypothesis
Does the last paragraph in this section, that describes the hypothesis as "reliant on willing ignorance" and "relying on [assumptions..] to irrational extremes" meet the NPOV guidelines?

Relationship to humans
The first sentence of this part is very confusing. "The human lineage evolved in Africa in sympatry with ostriches."

Sympatry is defined to be speciation within same habitat and that the species can interbreed. So how this applies to humans and ostrichies?

Linkato1 (talk) 05:58, 30 August 2019 (UTC)