Scientists in Antarctica have discovered what may be the oldest modern bird ever found. The 69 million-year-old fossil could finally put a longstanding debate about the origin of modern birds to rest.
The nearly complete skull belongs to Vegavis iaai, a waterfowl species believed to be the ancient relative of modern-day ducks and geese. The species lived at the same time as dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and may have survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the new study suggests.
Study co-author Julia Clarke, a paleontologist at the University of Texas, Austin reported the first V. iaai fossil found on Vega Island in Antarctica in 1992. The fossil was around 66 million to 68 million years old. She proposed that the species is linked to modern birds, especially waterfowl. But not everyone was convinced as scientists were missing a key piece of the puzzle — the creature’s skull.
“[The initial fossil] was just a completely different part of the skeleton. And when it comes to birds, the skull has a lot of phylogenetic or informative characteristics that tell you what it is,” study co-author Patrick O’ Connor, an evolutionary biologist at Ohio University, told Live Science.
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The new V.iaai fossil, estimated to be 68 million to 69 million years old, was found during an expedition in 2011, but has only now been analyzed. The study was published Wednesday (Feb. 5) in the journal Nature.
The discovery of the new skull enabled scientists to learn more about this species and how it fits in the bird family tree. They found that, unlike pre-modern birds that existed during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods (201.3 million to 66 million years ago), V. iaai has features that are similar to birds that exist today — including a brain shape typical of modern birds, and a unique bone in the upper beak. The upper beak of most pre-modern birds is made of a single bone, called the maxilla, with a little bit of another type of bone, pre-maxilla, at the tip.
“When we looked at the Vegavis, it’s the pre-maxilla all the way. The maxilla is tiny, which is exactly what we expect from modern birds,” study co-author Christopher Torres, a paleontologist…
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