Palaeognath Bird Orders is a Browse By group of the Nature Atlas that gathers the orders of palaeognaths, the ratites and tinamous that form the sister branch to all other living birds, such as the rheas, the kiwi and the tinamous. An entry belongs here when its own cited article states that the order is among the palaeognaths or the ratites. It excludes the orders of the ducks, fowl and all other living birds. Palaeognaths are the group that split first from all other living birds, and most of them cannot fly, so the group gathers the large running birds and the small ground-dwelling tinamous that share this deep branch of the bird family tree.
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Palaeognath Bird Orders
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Wikipedia: Rheiformes
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It is in the infraclass Paleognathae, which contains all ratites.
Wikipedia: Tinamou
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Tinamous are the only living group of palaeognaths able to fly, and were traditionally regarded as the sister group of the flightless ratites, but recent work places them well within the ratite radiation as most closely related to the extinct moa of New Zealand, implying flightlessness emerged among ratites multiple times.
Kiwi (Wikipedia)
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Approximately the size of a domestic chicken, kiwi are the smallest ratites (which also include ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries and the extinct elephant birds and moa).
Struthioniformes (Wikipedia)
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Struthioniformes is an order of birds with a single extant family, Struthionidae, containing the ostriches.
Wikipedia: Casuariiformes
WikipediaHas Member: Casuariiformes, Lead paragraphQuote, Has Member: Casuariiformes, Lead paragraph
The Casuariiformes is an order of large flightless birds that has four surviving members: the three species of cassowary, and the only remaining species of emu.
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