Sixty-six million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid impact near the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico triggered the extinction of all known non-bird dinosaurs. But for the early ancestors of today's waterfowl,

A 68-million-year-old skull fossil found in Antarctica has revealed the oldest known modern bird, which was likely related to the waterfowl that live by lakes and oceans today, according to new research.

In the icy wilderness of Antarctica, where glaciers now dominate the landscape, scientists have unearthed a fossil that rewrites the story of modern birds. The nearly complete skull of Vegavis iaai, a duck-sized bird that lived 69 million years ago,

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 waters off Antarctica. Thanks to a nearly complete fossil skull, scientists now have identified this waterfowl as the oldest-known member of the lineage spanning all birds alive today.

The new skull exhibits a long, pointed beak and a brain shape unique among all known birds previously discovered from the Mesozoic Era.

A near-perfect fossilized skull discovered in Antarctica reveals the bridge between prehistoric and modern birds, a new study has found. The fossil is a specimen of a species called Vegavis iaai, which lived around 69 million years ago – more than 2 million years before the mass extinction that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.

A new and nearly complete skull of Vegavis iaai discovered in Antarctica suggests that modern birds originated before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.