New Zealand’s kiwi bird may actually be Australian, scientists say

The iconic flightless kiwi bird, a national symbol of New Zealand, may actually have evolved from an Australian ancestor, according to new research.
Experts have long assumed that the bird, whose name is now synonymous with the people of the country, came from the equally endemic but now extinct giant moa.

Yet fossils have now been found in the South Island which appear to contradict that theory. Dating back 20 million years to an ancestor of the modern kiwi, they appear to be much more closely related to another large flightless bird – the Australian emu.

Experts from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, have analysed the remains and said it is now more likely that both the emu and kiwi share a common ancestor who could fly – and travelled over to New Zealand at some point millions of years ago.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealands-kiwi-bird-may-actually-be-australian-scientists-say-9011067.html

 

Surely this can't be right? I just hope it doesn't cause an international row and the breaking of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

  

://?roflmao?/: 

Just don't tell them that N.Z. used to be just another part of New South Wales ...

Used to work for the New Zealand Air Force, they called themselves the Kiwi's, they won't be amused if they are renamed the EMU's lol ::lightsab:: 

What with the cricket as well Australia really are on a roll at the moment.

They're taking over the world, one bird at a time!  

Sassy wrote:They're taking over the world, one bird at a time!  

Next thing you know they'll be after our Haggis claiming that's Australian as well.

 

Have they got enough mountains for it to walk?

probably, we have the Cassowarry too so its not like we are lacking in large fligthless birds.

Australia is one of the oldest landmasses New Zealand is a relatitivly new landmass (like Hawaii and Japan, it was created from Volcanoes on the sea floor.) so it's birds had to come from somewhere and Australia is the closest place.

@sassy
technically we have no mountains just big hills. the middle of Australia is actaually below sea level.

@irn bru
no offense, but we have decent food      

   England has no genuine mountains either, by the more usually accepted "international standards".... You have to go north to Scotland for that - where Ben Nevis and two of it's neighbours are the only ones that are genuine "mountain" peaks on the British Isles.. UNLESS of course, one fuzzies the argument with that minor hillock 'Mt Snowdon' in Wales..

Britain actually lowered their own domestic standard for a "mountain" to anything over 2,000 feet so that they could have some pretend mountains listed as real mountains on their maps of England; whereas the "international" standard can be looked at in a couple of ways:

1.   "The UN Environmental Programme's definition of "mountainous environment" includes any of the following:

Elevation of at least 2,500 m (8,200 ft);
Elevation of at least 1,500 m (4,900 ft), with a slope greater than 2 degrees;
Elevation of at least 1,000 m (3,300 ft), with a slope greater than 5 degrees;
Elevation of at least 300 m (980 ft), with a 300 m (980 ft) elevation range within 7 km (4.3 mi)."   (courtesy of Wikipedia's entry about "Mountains").

2. A lot of mountaineering and rock climbing associations and texts will classify peaks over 1500 metres (5,000 feet) as "mountains"..
3. AT the same time, a lot of the more serious mountaineers will scoff at anything under 10,000 feet.         

WHILE nothing in Oz will meet the likes of #3's criteria, there are still several peaks in NSW and Victoria, and a couple in Queensland and Tasmania that will just manage to squeeze into one or both of the first two definitions ~ including the likes of Mt. Kosciuszko, Mt. Hotham, Mt. Buller, Mt. Victoria, Mt. Canobalas, a couple of peaks in a couple of days walk from the Watagans, Carey's Peak up in the Barringtons (at 1544 m, or 5066 ft., one of the higher points around the rim of the Hunter Valley..), for example..

MANY big hills up and down down the East Coast of Australia were named as mountains because the 18th and 19th century British surveyors and explorers were working on the principle of their times of naming any obvious peak over 1000 feet above mean sea level as a "Mount __". And so we find Mt. Sugarloaf to west of here with an elevation of just over 1400 feet..

WHILE genuine "mountain climbing" is out of the question on the Australian mainland, and entails a visit to New Zealand or Irian Jaya to go mountaineering in Oceania, rock climbing on the other hand has a reasonably strong following down here...   

As we were talking about what the Haggis needed, obviously we were talking about it needing the equivalent to the mountains in Scotland Bee, where it runs around happily until Burn's Night lol

@sassy
     
hmmm..... maybe in our Antarctic Territories
     

And why does haggis need mountains?  :\\:[: 

 

IS the "Haggis" another one of those unfortunate critters with legs of different lengths, perchance ~ so that they must live permanently on steep slopes to help them stay upright ???

Otherwise, they tend to have the unfortunate habit of constantly falling over when attempting to walk on level ground..