but all things considered, very little can be said about the affiliations of "eremopezus". as ratites are nowadays presumed to have evolved from flying paleognaths similar to tinamous after the cretaceous—see also "palaeotis"—the egyptian fossil may be a distinct lineage of ratites after all, and is sometimes allied with the paleocene "remiornis" from france. and indeed, as noted by the first scientists that studied it, its known bones—in particular the distal tarsometatarsus—are more similar to those of ratites in general shape and in some details than to other birds. the details (such as lack of the supratendinal bridge) may however be simply plesiomorphies, while the overall resemblance might be the result of convergent evolution—for the autapomorphies of its toes are starkly unlike those found in any ratite. thus, if it was a ratite, it probably was the most unusual ratite known to date (while the hardly better-known "remiornis" may very well have been a rather conventional proto-ostrich).