Tag Archive for 'Emu'

Palaeognath birds. Image credit: Bernard Dupont / Kore / Kadellar / Frank Vincentz / Rohit / Manuel Anastácio / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Palaeognath Birds are Capable of Technical Innovation, Study Shows

Feb 24, 2025 by Natali Anderson

Palaeognathae (meaning ‘old jaws’) is a small group of birds which includes several species that have evolved flightlessness and gigantism, such as...

Flightless or poorly-flighted modern, and recently extinct, paleognath birds with their respective egg sizes. Lithornis, an ancient flying paleognath bird, is depicted and has an unknown egg size. Image credit: Hyunjoo Shin / CC BY 4.0.

Ornithologists Construct New Phylogenetic Family Tree for Paleognath Birds

Feb 1, 2023 by Natali Anderson

About 50 species of birds on Earth today do not belong to the same group as the other 10,000 currently in existence. Known as the paleognaths, this small...

Reconstruction of Sea Elephant Bay circa 1802, with southern elephant seals and King Island emus. Image credit: Julian Hume.

Paleontologists Find First Complete Egg of Extinct King Island Dwarf Emu

May 26, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

While the egg was about the same size as those laid by mainland emus, a duo of avian paleontologists from Australia and the United Kingdom used it to calculate...

A pair of kiwi by John Gerrard Keulemans in A history of the birds of New Zealand, 1873. Image credit: National Library NZ.

First Remote-Touch Probing Birds Appeared in Cretaceous Period

Dec 9, 2020 by News Staff

Some probe-foraging birds locate their buried prey by detecting vibrations in the substrate using a specialized tactile bill-tip organ. This remarkable...

Hypacrosaurus stebingeri chondrocyte. Image credit: Bailleul et al, doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwz206.

Scientists Find Chemical Markers of DNA in Calcified Cartilage of Duck-Billed Dinosaur

Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

In the 1980s, paleontologists found a dinosaur nesting ground with dozens of nestlings in northern Montana and identified them as Hypacrosaurus stebingeri,...

Calciavis grandei stands by the shores of the Eocene fossil lake in Wyoming, roughly 50 million years ago, with a small rallid bird in the background. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski.

Calciavis grandei: Kiwi Relatives Lived in North America 50M Years Ago

Jul 5, 2016 by News Staff

A nearly 50-million-year-old bird fossil unearthed in Wyoming represents a new species that is a close relative of living kiwis, ostriches, and emus, according...

The Great spotted kiwi, Apteryx haastii: a male with a juvenile. Artwork by John Gerrard Keulemans, 1876.

Proapteryx micromeros: Kiwi’s Ancestor Could Have Flown from Australia

Dec 26, 2013 by Sergio Prostak

A 19 to 16-million-year-old fossil of a kiwi-like bird unearthed at St Bathans, New Zealand, suggests that the kiwi is not a dwarf version of a distant...