A near complete skull fossil found in Antarctica has revealed the oldest known modern bird — a mallard duck-size creature related to the waterfowl that live by lakes and oceans today ...

and the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt report on the bird's fully preserved skull in ...

Though he didn’t know it at the time, the little slab contained a tiny and perfect skull from the oldest direct relative of modern birds ever discovered, a fowl that walked the Earth with dinosaurs.

An Antarctic discovery might offer new insights into the origins of modern birds. The skull, from an ancient relative of ducks and geese known as Vegavis iaai, suggests that the key characteristics of ...

That's according to researchers in a study that say as their brains grew, birds' skulls became more flexible, unlocking new ways to eat, move and survive. Researchers think that this shift in skull ...

Key aspects of early bird evolution have been difficult to resolve, owing to a lack of suitably preserved fossilized remains. A fossilized skull of a bird that lived during the age of the ...

The discovery of a remarkably near-complete fossil skull of the earliest known modern bird may help settle a long-standing debate about the evolutionary history of our feathered friends.

"This discovery shows that some of the birds flying over the heads of dinosaurs already had a fully modern skull geometry more than 80 million years ago," said co-lead author Dr. Luis Chiappe from ...

One-Of-A-Kind' Skull Fossil From Brazil Reveals Bird Brain Evolution By Will Dunham (Reuters) - The brains of today's birds facilitate a level of cognitive prowess and behavioral complexity ...

Their study, published in the journal, Biology Letters, found that museum skulls of long-dead birds can provide surprisingly detailed information on a species’ brain, including the size of the ...