News in Brief Life

Flightless birds’ history upset by ancient DNA

Ancestors of kiwis and elephant birds didn’t just drift with the continents

RELATIVELY ODD  Ancient DNA has revealed an unusual pair of closest relatives: New Zealand’s flightless, roughly chicken-sized kiwi species (skeleton of adult Apteryx australis shown) and Madagascar’s huge elephant bird (egg of Aepyornis maximus shown). 

Kyle Davis and Paul Scofield/Canterbury Museum

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Madagascar’s elephant birds — which weighed as much as three or four people and went extinct several hundred years ago — turn out to be the closest known relatives of New Zealand’s chicken-sized kiwi.