Paleontologists have found the first complete skull of a controversial prehistoric bird. Known as Vegavis iaai, the bird thrived in late-Cretaceous Antarctica, then a tropical paradise. About a ...

Previous Vegavis fossil specimens also lacked a complete skull, said study coauthor Patrick O’Connor, a professor of anatomical sciences at Ohio University.

The fossil, a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull, belongs to an extinct bird named Vegavis iaai and was collected ...

Vegavis was first described two decades ago, at which time it was argued to be an early member of the modern birds—but more recent analyses cast doubt on this suggestion.

While Vegavis has features that clearly mark it as being in the same group of waterfowl as ducks and geese, it would have ...

The mixture of archaic and modern skeletal traits in the original Vegavis specimen also made it difficult to place, said Chase Brownstein, a paleontologist at Yale University who was not involved ...

Previous Vegavis fossil specimens also lacked a complete skull, said study coauthor Patrick O’Connor, a professor of anatomical sciences at Ohio University.

Vegavis’ long beak and brain shape place it in the group that includes all modern birds and represents the earliest evidence of birds’ eventual widespread distribution across the planet.

An artist’s interpretation of Vegavis iaai diving for fish in the shallow ocean off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula, with ammonites and plesiosaurs for company. Disclaimer: AAAS and ...

Vegavis is one of only two modern birds known from the age of dinosaurs. The other one, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, lived about 67 million years ago in what is now Belgium.

An illustration of the Vegavis iaai diving for fish off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula. Mark Witton, 2025. The Chicxulub impactor smashed into Earth, wiped out around 75 percent of our ...