“Unearthed: The Prehistoric ‘Duck’ That Could Redefine Our Understanding of Modern Birds!”
In 2011, researchers unearthed a skull from V. iaai, allowing them to analyze its features in full. Their recently published findings revealed that the species had a brain shape similar to modern birds, a distinct beak structure, and strong jaw muscles suited for underwater hunting.
Researchers are still piecing together the creature’s place in the evolutionary record, and they hope that future fossil discoveries will provide a clearer picture of how birds survived the mass extinction event that spelled the end for most dinosaurs.
Finding Fossils Of ‘Vegavis Iaai’ In Antarctica
In 1992, the first Vegavis iaai fossil was discovered on Vega Island in Antarctica. It dated back roughly 68 million years to the Cretaceous Period, a geological era that saw some of today’s most recognizable dinosaurs, including the Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. During this period, Antarctica was a lush rainforest with average temperatures hovering at 66 degrees in the summer.
The end of the Cretaceous Period came when a giant asteroid struck Earth, causing the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs. Many scholars assumed that modern birds evolved in response to this mass extinction event, but the discovery of V. iaai has turned that idea on its head.
Joseph W. Holliday/Wikimedia CommonsVega Island in Antarctica, where the first V. iaai fossil was discovered.
“Studies that look at genomic comparisons of modern birds predict that the earliest divergence happened prior to that mass extinction,” study co-author Christopher Torres, a paleontologist at The University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, told Live Science. “But their fossil record is extraordinarily scarce.”
