'Wonderchicken' is the earliest known modern bird at nearly 67 million years old

[csziggy]

‘Wonderchicken’ is the earliest known modern bird at nearly 67 million years old
The animal is a common ancestor of today’s ducks and chickens

By Carolyn Gramling

March 18, 2020 at 12:02 pm

Behold the Wonderchicken, the earliest modern bird ever found.

Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, less than a million years before the asteroid impact that doomed all nonavian dinosaurs. The winged and beaked descendants of this quail-sized bird, however, survived that mass extinction event, forming a long lineage that includes modern chickens and ducks.

Based on analyses of fossil remains, which consist of a nearly complete skull and a few limb bones, the bird is closely related to the most recent common ancestor of land fowl and waterfowl, researchers report March 18 in Nature.

A. maastrichtensis’ skull is “a never previously seen mashup of ducklike and chickenlike features,” says Daniel Field, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Cambridge. “It’s like a turducken.”

More: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/wonderchicken-fossil-earliest-known-modern-bird

[tblue37]

1. K&R and thanks. nt

[Javaman]

2. super chicken!