When Birds Stopped Flying

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons ↓ More info below ↓ Support us on Patreon! http://patreon.com/eons Ratites have spread to Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. And there are fossils of Ratites in Europe, Asia, and North America too. That’s a lot of ground to cover for birds that can’t fly. So how did Ratites end up all over the world? Thanks to Ceri Thomas for the Lithornithid reconstruction. Check out more of Ceri s paleoart at http://alphynix.tumblr.com and http://nixillustration.com Thanks as always to Nobu Tamura for allowing us to use his wonderful paleoart: http://spinops.blogspot.com/ Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Super special thanks to the following Patreon patrons for helping make Eons possible: Katie Fichtner, Aldo Espinosa Zúñiga, Anthony Callaghan, Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle, Gregory Donovan, Ehit Dinesh Agarwal, الخليفي سلطان, Gabriel Cortez, Marcus Lejon, Anel Salas, Robert Arévalo, Robert Hill, Kelby Reid, Todd Dittman, Betsy Radley, PS, Colin Sylvester, Philip Slingerland, John Vanek, Jose Garcia, Noah offitzer, Eric Vonk, Tony Wamsley, Henrik Peteri, Jonathan Wright, Jon Monteiro, James Bording, Brad Nicholls, Miles Chaston, Michael McClellan, Jeff Graham, Maria Humphrey, Nathan Paskett, Connor Jensen, Sapjes, Daisuke Goto, Hubert Rady, Yuntao Zhou, Gregory Kintz, Tyson Cleary, Chandler Bass, Maly Lor, Joao Ascensao, Tsee Lee, Sarah Fritts, Ruben Winter, Ron Harvey Jr, Jacob Gerke, Alex Yan If you d like to support the channel, head over to http://patreon.com/eons and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/14/1314972111 https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/5990 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379109003953 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168583X09011550 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016670 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228865624_New_fossil_ratite_Aves_Palaeognathae_eggshell_discoveries_from_the_Late_Miocene_Baynunah_Formation_of_the_United_Arab_Emirates_Arabian_Peninsula https://www.jstor.org/stable/3545707 http://www.pnas.org/content/115/7/1546 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01923.x https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01871 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791642/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379110002246 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1810089/ http://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5923/42 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01838 https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/112/4/688/2415821 http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/5660 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2699.2010.02390.x http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/898.full http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1672/3395 https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/77117 http://www.pnas.org/content/110/42/16910 https://dspace.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/handle/2328/35951 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27989673 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2015.1031345 https://www.notornis.osnz.org.nz/notes-weight-flying-ability-habitat-and-prey-haasts-eagle-harpagornis-moorei https://www.jstor.org/stable/2462941 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmor.1052130108