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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 ...

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 ...

Vegavis was first reported 20 years ago by University of Texas at Austin co-author Dr. Julia Clarke. It was proposed to be an early member of modern waterfowl like ducks and geese.

While Vegavis has features that clearly mark it as being in the same group of waterfowl as ducks and geese, it would have looked very different, says O’Connor.The bird’s beak shape, jaw ...