support@headlinenews360.com
Last Updated:
This finding has shed new light on the evolutionary past of birds and revealed critical information about their survival and adaptation.
The fossil belongs to Vegavis iaai, an extinct bird species.
A recent discovery in Antarctica has unearthed a 68-million-year-old fossil, providing significant insights into the history of modern bird evolution. According to a recent study published in Nature, the fossil revealed evidence of the oldest known modern bird, a mallard duck-sized creature closely related to today’s waterfowl that lived by lakes and oceans.
This finding has shed new light on the evolutionary past of birds and revealed critical information about their survival and adaptation. The fossil belongs to Vegavis iaai, an extinct bird species that existed in the late Cretaceous period. It was the time when the deadly Tyrannosaurus rex dominated North America, soon before a catastrophic asteroid hit Earth, causing the dinosaur extinction.
Birds living with the dinosaurs were barely identifiable when compared to today’s bird species. Unlike today, the birds of that era sported bizarre features like toothed beaks and long, bony tails. However, the Vegavis iaai was a duck-sized bird and shared ecological similarities with aquatic bird species like loons, said Christopher Torres, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of biology at the University of the Pacific.
Torres explained that the fossil’s jaw musculature was well adapted for snapping its mouth shut underwater and this ability is seen today in loons and grebes. “So this bird was a foot-propelled pursuit diver. 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,” he added.
Vegavis was first identified two decades ago, but its status as a modern, or crown, bird species was questioned. Previously, most modern bird fossils had been discovered in post-extinction layers, leading many researchers to conclude that birds with current features appeared only after the 66 million-year-old asteroid hit.
The discovery of Vegavis iaai has significant implications for our understanding of bird evolution. As Patrick O’Connor, a professor of anatomical sciences at Ohio University, noted, Vegavis represents “the earliest member of this entire radiation that we see around us today, which consists of 11,000 bird species”.
According to the study, the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project collected the fossil during a 2011 expedition. The fossil was found trapped in rock dating back 68.4 to 69.2 million years and exhibited modern traits, such as a toothless beak.
- Location :
Delhi, India, India
