A recently analyzed near-complete fossil skull found in Antarctica has revealed Vegavis iaai to be the oldest known modern bird, according to a study published in Nature.

With its glaciers and sub-zero temperatures, Antarctica hardly seems like a place of refuge. However, the now icy continent might have been just that for the early ancestors of today’s living waterbirds –especially after an asteroid slammed into the Earth.

Paleontologists have been arguing whether modern birds developed before or after the infamous asteroid for decades. Now, a team of researchers has analyzed a 69-million-year-old fossil belonging to the long-extinct bird Vegavis iaai that could put the discussion to rest.

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.

A newly analysed fossil skull settles a palaeontological debate over Vegavis iaai, confirming it as a relative of ducks and geese that lived 69 million years ago

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.