Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 May 23;344(6186):898-900.
doi: 10.1126/science.1251981.

Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution

Kieren J Mitchell  1 , Bastien Llamas  1 , Julien Soubrier  1 , Nicolas J Rawlence  1 , Trevor H Worthy  2 , Jamie Wood  3 , Michael S Y Lee  4 , Alan Cooper  5
Affiliations
Free article

Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution

Kieren J Mitchell et al. Science. .
Free article

Abstract

The evolution of the ratite birds has been widely attributed to vicariant speciation, driven by the Cretaceous breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. The early isolation of Africa and Madagascar implies that the ostrich and extinct Madagascan elephant birds (Aepyornithidae) should be the oldest ratite lineages. We sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of two elephant birds and performed phylogenetic analyses, which revealed that these birds are the closest relatives of the New Zealand kiwi and are distant from the basal ratite lineage of ostriches. This unexpected result strongly contradicts continental vicariance and instead supports flighted dispersal in all major ratite lineages. We suggest that convergence toward gigantism and flightlessness was facilitated by early Tertiary expansion into the diurnal herbivory niche after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

Associated data