In 2005, paleontologists first identified Vegavis iaai based on a fossil found in Antarctica, dating back 68 million years. But that specimen was missing most of its skull, ...

An illustration of "Vegavis iaai's" skeleton, with preserved bones depicted in white. Christopher Torres, University of the Pacific. Birds from elsewhere around the globe that date back to the end ...

The duck-like Vegavis iaai had strong jaws for snatching fish. Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Search for: ...

Birds evolved from dinosaurs millions of years ago – but the route from these avian ancestors to now is largely mysterious. Scientists now have a new waypoint on this journey, thanks to the discovery ...

Around 20 years ago, a team of paleontologists identified Vegavis iaai for the first time, citing a fossil from Antarctica, around 68 million years to 66 million years old.At the time of the ...

While Vegavis has features that clearly mark it as being in the same group of waterfowl as ducks and geese, it would have looked very different, says O’Connor.The bird’s beak shape, jaw ...

Vegavis iaai was first reported 20 years ago by Dr. Julia Clarke of The University of Texas at Austin and several colleagues, who proposed it as an early member of modern birds evolutionarily ...

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.

Fossils of Vegavis were first described two decades ago. But without sufficient cranial remains its place on the bird family tree had remained ambiguous.

Vegavis was a fish-eating diving bird that resembled a modern loon. However, Agnolin says its skeleton shows that it was related to ducks and geese, and to land fowl such as chickens.

Digital reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous (~69 million years old) crown bird Vegavis iaai that was completed following high-resolution micro-computed tomography of a fossil-bearing concretion ...