Cretaceous Antarctic bird skull elucidates early avian ecological diversity

Vegavis AMNH FARB 30899 from 69.2–68.4 Ma supplies the oldest highlighted crown-bird test in this atlas, but its crown-waterfowl membership is a 2025 matrix result and therefore the 69.2 Ma Neornithes range remains topology-dependent.

The highlighted Maastrichtian crown-bird candidates occur in Antarctica and Europe, whereas living Neornithes are global; these endpoints do not reconstruct a complete Cretaceous distribution or center of origin.

Neornithes is the crown defined by the common ancestor of living birds and all descendants; Archaeopteryx is outside that crown, while Vegavis and Asteriornis require explicit fossil-placement analyses.

Neornithes has no single crown-wide ecology; the narrow beak, enlarged jaw-muscle attachment and skull of Vegavis support underwater prey capture for that fossil only.

Vegavis AMNH FARB 30899 preserves a toothless reduced-maxilla beak, hyperinflated cerebrum and specialized jaw apparatus, while Asteriornis preserves a different Maastrichtian galloanseran character combination.

The 69.2–68.4 Ma skull AMNH FARB 30899 supports placement of Vegavis among crown waterfowl in the 2025 combined analysis, but earlier analyses recovered stem-anatid, stem-anseriform or outside-Aves positions, so crown membership remains a scoped hypothesis.

Vegavis is represented by skull AMNH FARB 30899 from the 69.2–68.4 Ma Sandwich Bluff Member interval; that dated individual does not establish a genus-wide or crown-bird first appearance, and crown-waterfowl placement remains model-dependent.