structural:summarization, stylistic:tone, structural:scholar_edition
Origin and evolution

No unambiguously paleognathous fossil birds are known until the Cenozoic (though birds occasionally interpreted as lithornithids occur in Albian appalachian sites), but there have been many reports of putative paleognaths, and it has long been inferred that they may have evolved in the Cretaceous. Given the northern hemisphere location of the morphologically most basal fossil forms (such as Lithornis, Pseudocrypturus, Paracathartes and Palaeotis), a Laurasian origin for the group can be inferred. The present almost entirely Gondwanan distribution would then have resulted from multiple colonisations of the southern landmasses by flying forms that subsequently evolved flightlessness, and in many cases, gigantism.

One study of molecular and paleontological data found that modern bird orders, including the paleognathous ones, began diverging from one another in the Early Cretaceous. Benton (2005) summarized this and other molecular studies as implying that paleognaths should have arisen 110 to 120 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous. He points out, however, that there is no fossil record until 70 million years ago, leaving a 45 million year gap. He asks whether the paleognath fossils will be found one day, or whether the estimated rates of molecular evolution are too slow, and that bird evolution actually accelerated during an adaptive radiation after the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary).

Other authors questioned the monophyly of the Palaeognathae on various grounds, suggesting that they could be a hodgepodge of unrelated birds that have come to be grouped together because they are coincidentally flightless. Unrelated birds might have developed ratite-like anatomies multiple times around the world through convergent evolution. McDowell (1948) asserted that the similarities in the palate anatomy of paleognaths might actually be neoteny, or retained embryonic features. He noted that there were other features of the skull, such as the retention of sutures into adulthood, that were like those of juvenile birds. Thus, perhaps the characteristic palate was actually a frozen stage that many carinate bird embryos passed through during development. The retention of early developmental stages, then, may have been a mechanism by which various birds became flightless and came to look similar to one another.

Hope (2002) reviewed all known bird fossils from the Mesozoic looking for evidence of the origin of the evolutionary radiation of the Neornithes. That radiation would also signal that the paleognaths had already diverged. She notes five Early Cretaceous taxa that have been assigned to the Palaeognathae. She finds that none of them can be clearly assigned as such. However, she does find evidence that the Neognathae and, therefore, also the Palaeognathae had diverged no later than the Early Campanian age of the Cretaceous period.

Vegavis is a fossil bird from the Maastrichtian stage of Late Cretaceous Antarctica. Vegavis is most closely related to true ducks. Because virtually all phylogenetic analyses predict that ducks diverged after paleognaths, this is evidence that paleognaths had already arisen well before that time.

An exceptionally preserved specimen of the extinct flying paleognathe Lithornis was published by Leonard et al. in 2005. It is an articulated and nearly complete fossil from the early Eocene of Denmark, and thought to have the best preserved lithornithiform skull ever found. The authors concluded that Lithornis was a close sister taxon to tinamous, rather than ostriches, and that the lithornithiforms + tinamous were the most basal paleognaths. They concluded that all ratites, therefore, were monophyletic, descending from one common ancestor that became flightless. They also interpret the paleognath-like Limenavis, from Early Cretaceous Patagonia, as possible evidence of a Cretaceous and monophyletic origin for paleognaths.

Mysterious large eggs from the Pliocene of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands have been attributed to ratites.

An ambitious genomic analysis of the living birds was performed in 2007, and it contradicted Leonard et al. (2005). It found that tinamous are not primitive within the paleognaths, but among the most advanced. This requires multiple events of flightlessness within the paleognaths and partially refutes the Gondwana vicariance hypothesis (see below). The study looked at DNA sequences from 19 loci in 169 species. It recovered evidence that the paleognaths are one natural group (monophyletic), and that their divergence from other birds is the oldest divergence of any extant bird groups. It also placed the tinamous within the ratites, more derived than ostriches, or rheas and as a sister group to emus and kiwis, and this makes ratites paraphyletic.

A related study addressed the issue of paleognath phylogeny exclusively. It used molecular analysis and looked at twenty unlinked nuclear genes. This study concluded that there were at least three events of flightlessness that produced the different ratite orders, that the similarities between the ratite orders are partly due to convergent evolution, and that the Palaeognathae are monophyletic, but the ratites are not.

Beginning in 2010, DNA analysis studies have shown that tinamous are the sister group to extinct moa of New Zealand.

A 2020 molecular study of all bird orders found paleognaths and neognaths to have diverged in the Late Cretaceous or earlier, before 70 million years ago. However, all modern paleognath orders only originated in the latest Paleocene and afterwards, with ostriches diverging in the latest Paleocene, rheas in the early Eocene, kiwis (and presumably elephant birds) very shortly after in the early Eocene, and finally Casuariiformes and tinamous (and presumably moas) diverging from one another in the mid-Eocene.