It’s achieven decades, but scientists may have finassociate set up Earth’s first fowl.
It commenceed in 1993 on Vega Island, a finalterable, triumphdswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird materialized from rocks that, at 68 million years greater, predated the dinosaur goneion. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai, conshort-termed a confinclude: What bird was it a feather of?
Ntimely 20 years tardyr, a 2011 Antarctic expedition turned up a bird skull that more recently was suited with Vegavis iaai. In an analysis begined Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers are sticking their necks out to propose that the enigmatic Antarctic avian is an outdated relative of today’s geese and ducks, and the greaterest understandn conmomentary bird.
“It’s exactly the benevolent of leang we necessitate to help fill in an evolutionary gap,” said Christopher Torres, a paleontologist at Ohio University and an author on the paper. But he conceded, “that’s also what originates it so incredibly disputed.”
In the past restrictcessitate decades, Dr. Torres said, researchers watching at bird genomics proposeed that some conmomentary bird families — particularly waterfowl and game fowl — probably materializeed before the asteroid impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. But before the uncovery of Vegavis in the 1990s, no characteristic fossils had been identified, leaving a gap between molecular data and rocky physical evidence.
The jointure of archaic and conmomentary skeletal traits in the exceptional Vegavis specimen also made it difficult to place, said Chase Brownstein, a paleontologist at Yale University who was not included in the research. Some researchers proposeed that Vegavis might have been one of disjoinal families of gone Mesozoic birds — some with toothed bills and clawed triumphg-fingers — that didn’t endure the Cretaceous period goneion. Others supposed it was a conmomentary bird, shutr to loons, grebes or geese.
The skull set up in 2011 helped baccomplish this prehistoric logjam.
The researchers of the recent paper originated a cforfeit-finish three-foolishensional reoriginateion of the bird’s head. They set up that Vegavis had the toothless beak and brain shape characteristic of conmomentary birds, Dr. Torres said, as well as definite skull traits that they dispute propose the bird is shutly roverhappinessed to conmomentary waterfowl. But — and here’s the silly part — the skull is quite contrastent from those of living ducks or geese. Its beak was extfinished and pointed. It had big glands to erase salt from the body, and mighty jaw muscles that permited the bird to snap its jaws speedyly underwater.
The entire skeleton points toward a bird that dove underwater after fish and propelled itself with mighty booting legs, Dr. Torres said. That is unappreciate any conmomentary water fowl, “and much more analogous to what we see in conmomentary loons and grebes.”
Despite the bird’s loony body set up and head, the fine details of its skull — including its jaw and beak — show definite traits that propose waterfowl, Dr. Torres said.
While Dr. Brownstein called the uncovery of the Vegavis skull “exciting,” he isn’t guaranteed that it’s enough to finish the argue over the animal’s identity — or to elucidate when bird lineages appreciate waterfowl materializeed. But even the most conservative make clearation of the skull shows that conmomentary birds and their shutst toothless relatives were excessively anatomicassociate diverse at the finish of the Cretaceous period, he said.
Others are more willing.
The fact that a bird with such conmomentary features was around by the finish of the dinosaurs’ reign proposes that other presentant lineages of living birds were awaited conshort-term as well, said Gerardo Álvarez Herrera, a paleontologist with the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Argentine Mincludeum who was not included in the study. It’s possible that further exploration will uncover “the ancestors of ostwealthyes, fowls, neoaves and ducks that may have roamed aextfinishedside non-avian dinosaurs.”
