Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucat n Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ...

A Cretaceous-era skull found on Vega Island, Antarctica, has been confirmed as a member of the same order as ducks and geese, ...

With its glaciers and sub-zero temperatures, Antarctica hardly seems like a place of refuge. However, the now icy continent ...

A few fossilized body parts hinted at an enigmatic bird's close ties to waterfowl like ducks and geese. A newfound skull may bolster that idea.

The skull, from an ancient relative of ducks and geese known as Vegavis iaai, suggests that the key characteristics of modern birds were already in place 69 million years ago. Birds evolved from ...

Learn more about Vegavis iaai, an ancient ancestor of modern-day ducks, and one of the earliest modern birds ever discovered.

Near the end of the age of dinosaurs, a bird resembling today's loons and grebes dove for fish and other prey in the perilous ...

The discovery of a 69-million-year-old bird fossil is reshaping our understanding of avian evolution.

Paleontologists have been arguing whether modern birds developed before or after the infamous asteroid for decades. Now, a ...

The Late Cretaceous modern (crown) bird,Vegavis iaai, pursuit diving for fish in the shallow ocean off the coast of the Antarctic peninsula, with ammonites and plesiosaurs forcompany. Sixty-six ...