{"id":21623,"date":"2025-02-05T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21623"},"modified":"2025-02-05T16:32:25","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:32:25","slug":"the-search-for-the-original-silly-goose-in-the-fossil-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21623","title":{"rendered":"The Search for the Original Silly Goose in the Fossil Record"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some paleontologists think that fossils recovered from Antarctica are evidence of birds similar to modern geese and ducks that lived alongside the dinosaurs.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth\u2019s first fowl.<\/p>\n

It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai<\/a>, presented a puzzle: What bird was it a feather of?<\/p>\n

Nearly 20 years later, a 2011 Antarctic expedition turned up a bird skull that more recently was matched with Vegavis iaai. In an analysis published Wednesday in the journal Nature<\/a>, researchers are sticking their necks out to suggest that the mysterious Antarctic avian is an ancient relative of today\u2019s geese and ducks, and the oldest known modern bird.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exactly the kind of thing we need to help fill in an evolutionary gap,\u201d said Christopher Torres, a paleontologist at Ohio University and an author on the paper. But he conceded, \u201cthat\u2019s also what makes it so incredibly controversial.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past few decades, Dr. Torres said, researchers looking at bird genomics suggested that some modern bird families \u2014 particularly waterfowl and game fowl \u2014 probably appeared before the asteroid impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. But before the discovery of Vegavis in the 1990s, no characteristic fossils had been identified, leaving a gap between molecular data and rocky physical evidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The mixture of archaic and modern skeletal traits in the original Vegavis specimen also made it difficult to place, said Chase Brownstein, a paleontologist at Yale University who was not involved in the research. Some researchers suggested that Vegavis might have been one of several families of extinct Mesozoic birds \u2014 some with toothed bills and clawed wing-fingers \u2014 that didn\u2019t survive the Cretaceous period extinction. Others believed it was a modern bird, closer to loons, grebes or geese.<\/p>\n

The skull found in 2011 helped breach this prehistoric logjam.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A digital reconstruction of Vegavis iaai\u2019s skull, completed following high-resolution micro-computed tomography of a fossil-bearing concretion discovered on Vega Island.<\/span>C. Torres and J. Gronke<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Some paleontologists think that fossils recovered from Antarctica are evidence of birds similar to modern geese and ducks that lived alongside the dinosaurs.It\u2019s taken decades, but scientists may have finally found Earth\u2019s first fowl.It started in 1993 on Vega Island, a frigid, windswept rock off the Antarctic Peninsula. A mostly headless skeleton of a loon-size diving bird emerged from rocks that, at 68 million years old, predated the dinosaur extinction. The species, which scientists named Vegavis iaai, presented a puzzle: What bird was it a feather of?Nearly 20 years later, a 2011 Antarctic expedition turned up a bird skull that more recently was matched with Vegavis iaai. In an analysis published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers are sticking their necks out to suggest that the mysterious Antarctic avian is an ancient relative of today\u2019s geese and ducks, and the oldest known modern bird.\u201cIt\u2019s exactly the kind of thing we need to help fill in an evolutionary gap,\u201d said Christopher Torres, a paleontologist at Ohio University and an author on the paper. But he conceded, \u201cthat\u2019s also what makes it so incredibly controversial.\u201dIn the past few decades, Dr. Torres said, researchers looking at bird genomics suggested that some modern bird families \u2014 particularly waterfowl and game fowl \u2014 probably appeared before the asteroid impact that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. But before the discovery of Vegavis in the 1990s, no characteristic fossils had been identified, leaving a gap between molecular data and rocky physical evidence.The mixture of archaic and modern skeletal traits in the original Vegavis specimen also made it difficult to place, said Chase Brownstein, a paleontologist at Yale University who was not involved in the research. Some researchers suggested that Vegavis might have been one of several families of extinct Mesozoic birds \u2014 some with toothed bills and clawed wing-fingers \u2014 that didn\u2019t survive the Cretaceous period extinction. Others believed it was a modern bird, closer to loons, grebes or geese.The skull found in 2011 helped breach this prehistoric logjam.A digital reconstruction of Vegavis iaai\u2019s skull, completed following high-resolution micro-computed tomography of a fossil-bearing concretion discovered on Vega Island.C. Torres and J. GronkeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21625,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21626,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21623\/revisions\/21626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}