Novaeratitae is a proposed clade that was originally defined to contain the recent common ancestors of the orders Casuariiformes (emus and cassowaries) and Apterygiformes (kiwis).[1][2] Recently it has been determined that the elephant birds of the extinct order Aepyornithiformes were the closest relatives of the kiwis, and therefore are part of this group.[3] The implication is that ratites had lost flight independently in each group, as the elephant birds are the only novaeratites found outside Oceania.[3] This clade has been contested by other studies, which find the relationships between the four main clades of non-ostrich palaeognaths (moa+tinamou, kiwi+elephant bird, rheas, and emus+cassowaries) to be an unresolved polytomy, with only slightly more genetic support for Novaeritiae over alternative proposals.[4]
^Hackett, S.J. et al. (2008) A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History. Science, 320, 1763.
^Yuri, T. (2013) Parsimony and model-based analyses of indels in avian nuclear genes reveal congruent and incongruent phylogenetic signals. Biology, 2:419–44.
