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.

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