With its glaciers and sub-zero temperatures, Antarctica hardly seems like a place of refuge. However, the now icy continent might have been just that for the early ancestors of today’s living ...

The nearly complete skull belongs to Vegavis iaai, a prehistoric waterfowl species that lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex at the end of the Cretaceous period. This fossil, found on Vega Island ...

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

A newly studied Vegavis iaai skull from Antarctica confirms that modern bird lineages, like ducks and geese, were evolving ...

The skull is from Vegavis iaai, an extinct duck-like bird that lived during the Late Cretaceous, just before non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. It’s one of very few 3D bird skulls known to ...

Paleontologists have found the first complete skull of a controversial prehistoric bird. Known as Vegavis iaai, the bird thrived in late-Cretaceous Antarctica, then a tropical paradise.

An Antarctic discovery might offer new insights into the origins of modern birds. The skull, from an ancient relative of ducks and geese known as Vegavis iaai, suggests that the key characteristics of ...

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

The fossil, a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull, belongs to an extinct bird named Vegavis iaai and was collected during a 2011 expedition by the Antarctic Peninsula Palaeontology Project.

Previous Vegavis fossil specimens also lacked a complete skull, said study coauthor Patrick O’Connor, a professor of anatomical sciences at Ohio University. Skulls are where the most ...

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.