Talk:Rheidae

I'm not even the one who started this, but it appears Rheiformes is being merged into this article, and with every merge tag, there should be a discussion. It's because Opisthodactylidae, a family of ancient birds related to the modern rheas (Rheidae), is generally now considered to be placed within Rheidae. One of the "opisthodactylids", Diogenornis, is thought to possibly be a basal casuariiform instead. With Opisthodactylus , the other "opisthodactylid" now considered to be a rheid (in fact according to this paper it seems Opisthodactylus has been considered a rheid since the description of the genus), I think it's time for a merge. ~2025-31600-97 (talk) 12:27, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I agree, a merge seems appropriate given the stubby nature of both articles and that Rheiformes = Rheidae, and vice versa. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 13:43, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

Then shouldn’t the taxonomy section be removed as it implies there should be a separate article? Houcaris\Zhenghecaris|Talk 02:40, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Apologies, I just meant extant species when I said that the two taxa were identical. That said, this page already contains all the taxonomy info which would need to be included on the Rheiformes page, which I think further supports a merge. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 12:36, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

In that case, shouldn't Rheidae be merged to Rheiformes instead of vice-versa? The Morrison Man (talk) 15:34, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't necessarily have an opinion on which way the merge goes. I know for other, similar, avian single-family orders, there isn't really a standard. Cariamiformes/Cariamae went with order, Stearornithiformes/Steatornithidae went with family. Nyctibiiformes/Nyctibiidae is completely collapsed into Potoos.

I think any of these options are fine, but as it stands, I don't think we need Rheiformes, Rheidae, and Rhea. DuckWrangler97 (talk) 15:43, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

It seems all currently named Rheiform genera fall within Rheidae, so it honestly might be better to merge the content of those articles to Rheiformes. Opisthodactylidae should also be merged there, as that does not seem to have been considered seperate since the 80s, as mentioned below. The Morrison Man (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

I meant to say that the redirect for Opisthodactylidae should be moved accordingly, whoops. As a merge seems uncontroversial I will carry that out. The Morrison Man (talk) 00:07, 7 January 2026 (UTC)

Agreed, it seems like only a single author, Alvarenga, considers Opisthodactylus within a separate family and even then that publication is from the 1980s. Looking through papers, I couldn't find any currently valid members of Rheiformes that isn't simply within Rheidae. Papers like Picasso et al. (2022) and Buffetaut (2014) give a brief but good taxonomic history of Opisthodactylus. I think that the merge is a completely valid thing to do. SeismicShrimp (talk) 17:04, 4 January 2026 (UTC)