When Geese Roamed The Earth

It’s been known for some time that birds are descended from dinosaurs, with Archaeopteryx representing one strong link between avians and antiquity. However, researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered definitive proof that birds existed alongside dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. Their newly released  research even established this prehistoric bird as a relative of today’s waterfowl:

Research by paleontologist Dr. Julia A. Clarke, an assistant professor in the marine, earth and atmospheric sciences department at NC State, and colleagues provides unprecedented fossil proof that some close cousins to living bird species coexisted with dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago. Information from a new avian species called Vegavis iaai indicates that these birds lived in the Cretaceous period and must have survived the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) mass extinction event that included the disappearance of all other dinosaurs…

…“We have more data than ever to propose at least the beginnings of the radiation of all living birds in the Cretaceous,” Clarke says. “We now know that duck and chicken relatives coexisted with non-avian dinosaurs. This does not mean that today’s chicken and duck species lived with non-avian dinosaurs, but that the evolutionary lineages leading to today’s duck and chicken species did.”…

…The data place Vegavis within Aves, which includes common ancestors of all living birds we have today and all its descendents – that is, the radiation of all living birds – and specifically within one group of Aves called Anseriformes, the waterfowl, which includes ducks, geese and allies. Within this group Vegavis is positioned close to the lineage leading to true ducks and geese, called Anatidae.

Don’t expect to add Vegavis iaai to your life list. It’s gone the way of, well, the dinosaurs.