Primordial poultry is oldest modern bird

Artist’s reconstruction of the world’s oldest known modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, in its original environment. (Phillip Krzeminski)

Primordial poultry is oldest modern bird

An extraordinary fossil skull belonged to the oldest modern bird ever found. The duck-sized Asteriornis maastrichtensis lived 66.7 million years ago, just 700,000 years before the asteroid impact that killed off all non-avian dinosaurs. Paleontologists were staggered to discover the skull when they used a CT scan to look inside a rock found in Belgium in 2000 by an amateur fossil hunter.

National Geographic | 7 min read
Read more: Go deeper with the expert view in the Nature News & ViewsReference: Nature paper