The ancestors of modern waterfowl weren’t all that odd. Diving for fish and other prey in the waters of Antarctica, they looked like today’s birds, but were they truly modern?
A new paper published today in Nature tells us all about these ancestors of modern-day ducks. Assessing a newly found fossil of Vegavis iaai from the Late Cretaceous around 69 million years ago, the paper confirms the classification of the species as a truly modern bird, not wholly unlike the ducks and geese of today.
“Few birds are as likely to start as many arguments among paleontologists as Vegavis,” said Christopher Torres, a study author and a now-professor at the University of the Pacific, according to a press release. “This new fossil is going to resolve a lot of those arguments. Chief among them: Where is Vegavis perched in the bird tree of life?”
Around 20 years ago, a team ...
