Digital reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous (~69 million years old) crown bird Vegavis iaai that was completed following ...

Location matters, as Antarctica may have served as a refuge ... Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico triggered ...

Location matters, as Antarctica may have served as a refuge ... But modern birds are exceptionally rare before the end-Cretaceous extinction, and more recent studies have cast doubt on the ...

Learn more about Vegavis iaai, an ancient ancestor of modern-day ducks, and one of the earliest modern birds ever discovered.

For decades, scientists have wondered at the taxonomy of Vegavis iaai— an ancient avian specimen that lived in what is now ...

In a nutshell A newly discovered 69-million-year-old bird skull from Antarctica proves that modern birds were already diverse ...

The Late Cretaceous modern (crown) bird,Vegavis iaai, pursuit diving for fish in the shallow ocean off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula, with ammonites and plesiosaurs forcompany. Sixty-six ...

Skull of ancient bird Vegavis is 69 million years old Key traits define Vegavis as anatomically modern bird Antarctica had a ...

With its glaciers and sub-zero temperatures, Antarctica hardly seems like a place of refuge. However, the now icy continent ...

"Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as 'vegavis,'" said professor Christopher Torres.

A few fossilized body parts hinted at an enigmatic bird's close ties to waterfowl like ducks and geese. A newfound skull may bolster that idea.