Within Heliornithidae, sungrebes are sister to the Asian finfoot, rather than the geographically closer African finfoot, according to the results of both Mitochondrial and Nuclear DNA sequencing. This adds credence to the idea that finfeet moved from an African origin into Eurasia and then across Beringia and through North America to reach South America, rather than coming across the Atlantic from Africa, or having evolved on Gondwana, separated with the shifting of the continents, and moved north into Laurasia from there. This would also explain the absence of finfeet from Australia, and the success of the Sungrebe at colonizing the continental Neotropics while failing to colonize any major Caribbean islands that do not have glacial land bridges to the mainland.