A Fossil Uncovered In Antarctica May Be The Oldest Modern Bird Ever Found
A skull fossil uncovered in Antarctica may be the oldest modern bird ever found—a creature the size of a mallard duck that was related to the waterfowl that live near the lakes and oceans today.
The fossil belongs to Vegavis iaai, an extinct species of bird. It is believed to be the ancient relative of modern-day ducks and geese.
It lived at the end of the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex dominated North America, just before an asteroid hit the Earth and killed off all the non-avian dinosaurs.
The new study suggests that the species may have survived the mass extinction. The first V. iaai fossil was found in 1992 on Vega Island in Antarctica. It was around 66 million to 68 million years old.
The more recently discovered fossil is estimated to be between 68 million to 69 million years old. It was unearthed during an expedition in 2011 but has only been analyzed now.
The discovery has allowed researchers to learn more about this species and where it fits into the bird family tree.
Unlike premodern birds that existed alongside the dinosaurs, which were almost unrecognizable with features like toothed beaks and long, bony tails, V. iaai looked similar to the aquatic birds of today, such as loons.
The species included a brain shape typical of modern birds, along with a unique bone in the upper beak. The researchers used a 3D reconstruction to show that V. iaai had a long, narrow beak with powerful jaw muscles.
“So this bird was a foot-propelled pursuit diver,” said Christopher Torres, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of biology at the University of the Pacific in California.
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“It used its legs to propel itself underwater as it swam, and something that we were able to observe directly from this new skull was it had jaw musculature [that] was associated with snapping its mouth shut underwater in pursuit of fish. And that is a lifestyle that we observe broadly among loons and grebes.”
After the mass extinction, rapid evolution took place. But the earliest divergence from prehistoric birds is predicted to have happened before the mass extinction. However, the fossil record for modern birds is scarce.
The evidence points to V. iaai being part of the group that includes all modern birds, but it is unclear whether the species is actually a relative of modern ducks and geese.
V. iaai existed when global temperatures were much higher than they are today. Antarctica was also covered in vegetation at the time.
Its distance from the asteroid impact may have saved the species from some of the destruction that followed.
The study was published in the journal Nature.
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