Revealing The Face Of Granduck
I may be more careful on the internet for now, but I still at least like to hear the newest discoveries of the prehistoric where it is safe.
Discovered in 1992 on Vega Island in Antarctica, Vegavis is well-known in the scientific community for not only being one of the oldest modern (neornithine) birds, but for possibly being one of the oldest waterfowl (such as today’s ducks, geese and swans), hailing from the Late Cretaceous period when Tyrannosaurus tyrannised North America. For over thirty years the head of this dire duck was only speculated, until now, with the description of a skull by researchers at Ohio University. Before the study, there has been debate if Vegavis was really an anseriforme or a primitive bird similar to the Cretaceous toothed seabird Ichthyornis, but this skull clearly shows features, such as a long, toothless beak and space for a characteristic enlarged brain, that lean strongly to the former conclusion. Only being a primitive relative of ducks however, its anatomy still is quite different, let alone the skull, which had a longer bill that looks to have been adapted for catching animals like fish and squid, including powerful jaw muscles to snap them up quickly in the water. The anatomy of its feet also suggest it would’ve dived using foot-based propulsion. Overall, it seems that Vegavis lived more like a grebe or a loon than a duck of today. Recent discoveries like this skull come to reveal an interesting frontier of knowledge of the lives of the earliest waterfowl in the age of the dinosaurs. Already has even a fossil of its vocal organs been discovered, which reveal that it could at least still make honking or quacking noises like its modern anatid relatives.
Being inquisitive of Cretaceous birds as much as their dinosaurian relatives myself, I’ve done a little sketch of Vegavis, reconstructed with its newly-found head. I would love to illustrate it again but in greater detail once I have finally recovered from the mental extinction event, perhaps in my planned Aeon Project.
The newly-described skull as tomographed in 3D for clarity.