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.

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.

The near-complete fossil skull, unearthed on Vega Island near the Antarctic Peninsula, reveals a bird that thrived in the challenging waters off Antarctica roughly 69 million years ago, just three million years before the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact.

This evidence comes from a nearly complete, 69-million-year-old skull of an extinct bird, named Vegavis iaai. The fossil is the oldest known modern bird, an early relative of ducks and geese. This extinct bird inhabited the shallow oceans off the coast of Antarctica during the reign of T.

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

In 1992, a paleontologist unearthed the fossil of a prehistoric bird called "Vegavis iaai" in Antarctica and hypothesized that it was an early relative of today's ducks and geese. However, because the fossil was missing a skull,

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,

A Cretaceous-era skull found on Vega Island, Antarctica, has been confirmed as a member of the same order as ducks and geese, making it one of the oldest known examples of a modern bird. Dating from not very long before the asteroid hit,