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?”
Modern or Not?
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 identification, the paleontologists classified the species as a modern bird, but their classification has been controversial and tricky to confirm since.
Part of the problem was that all of the fossils that paleontologists had to work with were partial fossils featuring skeletons without skulls. But the newly found fossil changes all that, featuring what the previously found fossils lack.
Collected in Antarctica in 2011 as part of the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project, the 69-million-year-old specimen is an almost complete skull, providing new insights into the species’ classification. Featuring a modern-shaped beak and a modern-shaped space for a brain with traits that are consistent with those of waterfowl today, the fossil suggests that the initial classification of Vegavis is a correct one, with the Late-Cretaceous fossil representing one of the earliest modern birds ever discovered.
Read More: Prehistoric Bird Brain May Be a Rosetta Stone for Avian Evolution
A Not-So-Odd Bird
According to the authors of the new paper, the other birds that were around 69 million years ago were strange and not so similar to the birds of today.
“Places with any substantial fossil record of Late Cretaceous birds, like Madagascar and Argentina, reveal an aviary of bizarre, now-extinct species with teeth and long bony tails, only distantly related to modern birds,” said Patrick O’Connor, a study author and a professor at Ohio University, according to the release. “Something very different seems to have been happening in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere, specifically in Antarctica.”
Unlike the Antarctic of today, Late-Cretaceous Antarctica was warmer and wetter, with temperate weather and lush vegetation. How this environment shaped early birds into modern birds is hard to say exactly, though it is possible that it established some of the traits seen in modern waterfowl today.
“This fossil underscores that Antarctica has much to tell us about the earliest stages of modern bird evolution,” O’Connor said in the release.
Beyond its insights into the evolution of the earliest modern birds, the new paper also paints a picture of how Vegavis lived. The bird was able to propel itself through Antarctic waters in pursuit of fish and other prey thanks to its powerful feet, and it snapped them up thanks to its powerful jaws, a feeding strategy that’s more similar to a modern loon than a modern duck.
Read More: What Makes Archaeopteryx Fossils the Bizarre Bridge Between Dinos and Birds?
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Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
