Flightless bird more species of flightless birds (including the kiwi, several species of penguins, the takahe, the weka, the moa, and several other extinct species) than any other such location. One reason is that until the arrival of humans roughly a thousand years ago, there were no large land predators in New Zealand; the main predators of flightless birds were larger birds. Ratites belong to the superorder Palaeognathae birds, which include the volant tinamou, and are believed to have evolved flightlessness independently multiple times within their own group. Some birds evolved flightlessness in response to the absence of predators, for example on
Southern California Marine Institute Southern California Marine Institute The Southern California Marine Institute (SCMI) is a multi-campus research facility and non-profit oceanographic institution headquartered in Terminal Island, California. In the late 1960s, marine scientists working at six campuses of the CSU system in the Los Angeles basin (Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Northridge, and Cal Poly Pomona) proposed the formation of an institute that would provide the advancement of marine programs. It was until 1971, when the university system decided to purchase the naval vessel R/V Nautilus for that specific purpose. In 1972, the creation of the Southern California Ocean Studies Consortium