Uncovering a Prehistoric Arctic Secret: Did Birds and Dinosaurs Really Share a Nest 73 Million Years Ago?
The researchers are still hoping to discover if some of the bones they found belong to Neornithes, a group that includes all modern birds. Tantalizingly, some bones have skeletal features that match Neornithes and have no “true teeth,” just like modern-day birds. If they are Neornithes, they would be the oldest such fossils ever found (so far, the oldest known examples are 69 million years old), but researchers would need to find a “partial or full skeleton” to know if they found Neornithes remains for certain.
Ultimately, the discovery of the 73 million-year-old bird bones in Alaska tells a remarkable story about the history of birds in the region. In the time of the dinosaurs, they surprisingly behaved just as they do now.
“The Arctic is considered the nursery for modern birds,” Druckenmiller remarked. “It’s kind of cool when you go to Creamer’s Field [a Fairbanks-area stopover for migrating geese, ducks and cranes], to know that they have been doing this for 73 million years.”
After reading about the discovery of 73 million-year-old bird fossils in Alaska, learn about some of the scariest bird species in the world. Or, discover the story of the Terror Bird, the fearsome prehistoric predator.
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