A newly discovered fossil in Antarctica, estimated to be 68 million years old, reveals the oldest known modern bird, Vegavis iaai. This duck-sized bird had a mixture of modern and ancient features ...

A 68-million-year-old Antarctic fossil revealed the oldest known modern bird, Vegavis iaai, a duck-sized diver with traits linking it to today’s waterfowl. A fossil unearthed in Antarctica has ...

For decades, scientists have wondered at the taxonomy of Vegavis iaai— an ancient avian specimen that lived in what is now Antarctica during the late Cretaceous period.

Scientists uncovered a 149-million-year-old bird fossil in southeastern China with unexpectedly modern traits they believe could rewrite the evolutionary history of birds. The recently ...

Researchers in China found Baminornis zhenghensis, which lived at roughly the same time as the famous Archaeopteryx but looked much more like modern birds due to its short tail Margherita Bassi ...

Saitta is a paleontologist who often studies non-avian dinosaurs (the branches of the dinosaur family tree that do not include modern birds). However, when he arrived at the Field Museum for a ...

A newly discovered fossil provides strong evidence that modern birds lived alongside dinosaurs. The 69-million-year-old skull of Vegavis iaai, found in Antarctica, features a toothless beak and a ...

Its short tail ends in a compound bone called the pygostyle, a feature uniquely present in modern birds. This indicates that the body structure of modern birds emerged in the Late Jurassic Period ...

The ancient bird, which lived about 150 million years ago, is called Baminornis zhenghensis. It closely resembled modern birds in surprising ways. Unlike Archaeopteryx, the other Jurassic-era bird ...

Nevertheless, they too were primitive aerialists that lacked many of the key flight-related adaptations of modern birds, such as shortened tails and modified shoulder girdles for powerful flapping.